


Mercy

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Mercyverse [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M, Spy's Head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 17:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 27,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unexpected act of mercy from the RED Sniper changes everything between him and the BLU Spy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of an AU to the Defiantverse, in that some of the same side characters appear (and I do imagine that the main Sniper and Spy are the same most of the time I write). Actually, although I wrote Defiant Ones first, I would say it's more of an alternate universe to this one, since Mercy fits a little closer to the canon we've gotten since I first started writing...
> 
> And speaking of canon we've gotten since I started writing fic for TF2, this fic plays on some of that...

"I'd kill for a beer." I say. Immediately after, I snort with laughter at the clear mental image, seeing a BLU through my scope about to take a sip and pulling the trigger. Hell, a beer would as much a reason as anything to do it, and isn't that just about right?

Doc snorts as well, dismissive. "The swill they send us you can't even call a real bier."

"Nah, maybe not, but it's better than nothing." I shrug. Regular deliveries are a week off, and beer and cigarettes're always the first things to run out. You're in charge of rationing your own smokes, and you can always go into town once you're off the clock, 'less the fight gets moved to some outpost or other that's too far.

Which would be now. I never mind being out in the middle of nowhere-- job's the same, and they'll ship us back to Teufort soon enough, and it's nice not having the townies stare at you. But running out of beer's just unfortunate.

We only get one radio station out here, and no tele, so it's the same deal day in, day out in the common lounge. Chiffons are on, talking about a sweet-talking guy, and I am still a beer away from being able to tolerate bubblegum teenybopping pop crap.

Scout eats it up, or I'd turn it off. Then again, it's all there is, and Pyro always seems like he's listening, too. Dunno about the others. Then again, right now, the lounge is half-empty. More than half, don't think Heavy counts when he's sleeping.

So Heavy's like a snoring mountain in an easy chair, and the Doc's got the chair beside his, and a book. Scout and Pyro have the radio. I've got a headache.

"Fine." Doc sighs after a minute. I try to rewind to our conversation. Something about beer. "I can never stand the stuff... I'd buy my own, but even when we are back at Teufort, there's nothing but cheap American swill in the store... You can take mine."

"You're telling me there's still a beer on this base?"

"At least one. I always take a couple when the supplies roll in, and then I always shove it to the back of the fridge when I remember how rotten it is. You're welcome to it."

My evening was looking up. I could even put up with shoving my way past a couple medical samples-- one beer wouldn't get me tipsy, but it'd get me mellow enough to put up with the soppy request show that was coming. Or I'd take it outside and just enjoy the silence.

I don't know what the Doc's got on hand now-- I know he travels with a blood-stained cooler full of what he calls 'essentials'-- but I do know he's waiting on a special delivery of his own, when we get moved back 'home' to Teufort. Tuned out most of his speech on the subject, pretty sure I didn't really hear him say 'heart transplants for everyone'.

I mean, I'm good with the ticker I got. Must've misheard him.

Anyway, nothing in his personal fridge I don't deal with on a daily basis. At least, this is what I thought, and what I would've been happy to go on thinking, and once I know different I need that beer he promised worse'n ever.

"Holy dooley!"

"... Kill me?"

I close the fridge, then open it again.

The head's still there, still looking up at me with pleading wet eyes and a hangdog mouth, and it's a severed head, and it's alive, and I'm really starting to want something a hell of a lot stronger than beer now.

"Please, kill me,"

"I can't-- I don't-- What are you? I--"

"Please?" It has its own ashtray, which is what pushes everything just beyond... I mean, I could think I was imagining things, if I was the type to imagine, but that just makes things real.

"I can't. I'm just here for a beer, if I mess with his stuff, the Doc'll have my-- erm, that is..."

"Please." It presses. He, I guess. The BLU Spy. This would explain why he hasn't killed me in a while... "I don't want to live like this."

I grab the beer, hand shaking, and pull the wire connecting him to a battery.

"That might kill you." I say, surprised at the apology in my own voice. "If it does, you did it yourself. If it doesn't, and he asks, you did it yourself."

"Thank you," There's an awful gasping sound, and a heavy gratitude in his eyes even as they start to lose focus.

I close the fridge fast and take my beer out onto the roof. No, it's certainly not enough to make me forget about this. But I'd rather have it than not, at the end of it all...


	2. Chapter 2

The nine-to-five was same as ever. I was jittery, more than usual. Much as I tried, I couldn't put last night out of my head completely, and I was running on fumes because every time I'd start to nod off, I'd see that severed head behind my own closed eyes. Caffeine was keeping me going, but it didn't help the jitters any.

Most of the day, there was no sign of the unfortunate Spy whose life I may or may not have helped end last night. If you can call it a life... I don't know whether or not you can. Once, late in the afternoon, I thought I heard a board behind me creak, thought I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke when the wind changed, but the blow never came. Our own Spy just around the corner, then. It's happened before, and when the wind changes and I smell smoke, it always gives me a start.

Brand's different, I think, but on the battlefield, it's not like I've got the luxury to think about it. The acrid tang hits, and if it's more tobacco than gunpowder, the panic button somewhere deep inside you's hit.

Still, not the worst thing. First time I came back from a run-in with the BLU Pyro, I puked my guts out in the respawn chamber. Know I'm not the only one who has, either, 'cause a few of us at least have rushed back out into the fray without cleaning up their mess.

Well, I don't know what set 'em off. That was early days. Could be the act of respawning at all is enough, the first time, to throw some people for a loop. Or could be just Demo having too much liquor in him, though usually he can hold it... At least, I've never seen him fall down drunk 'til well after dark, even if he does start by brushing his teeth with scrumpy.

Imagine I'm as relieved as anyone when the day's fighting's through. More than most, even, after last night, after no sleep and too many cups of coffee. No matter what I saw in that fridge, that night I sleep like the dead.

\---/-/---

There's a basket on the bonnet of my van in the morning. I wait a couple seconds to see if it explodes-- you never know, I mean. It doesn't.

There's a beer-- not the same sort we get on deliveries, but one I've seen them sell in town, when we get to town. There's also a pulp novel-- 'The Spungers', wherein apparently, conflict explodes between a beatnik con-man and a young rebel at Kings Cross. Neither of these items makes a lick of sense to me, but there's also a folded sheet of paper, which I imagine offers some explanation.

The logo on the stationery is for Builder's League United.

'Thank you', is the first thing it says.

I feel a moment's passing sickness.

'Thank you a million times. There are no words I can say, there is nothing I can give which would amount to half the gift you have given me in my most recent temporary death. I longed for it, for so long. For a little while, it was even impossible. My existence was torment, you saw that. Perhaps you think your little act of mercy a thing of no consequence, but to me it was the world.'

I'd put the head in the fridge out of my mind enough to sleep, just the last couple hours of the night, and now this. I don't know what to think. I don't want to keep reading, but there's more, so I do.

'I saw you. In the past, I suppose I would have thought nothing of killing you. A temporary inconvenience, after all, is it not? But death is almost never pleasant... I left, instead. Could I have? Like the scorpion and the frog, you knew what I was when you released me... but then again, I suppose I am more frog than scorpion.'

I laughed. The whole situation's absurd, and on top of that, I think... I think that was an honest-to-goodness joke. Last thing I expected.

'I thought your base might be running out of alcohol-- at least, the sort which is under 100% proof. We often find ourselves running short around this time, especially away from Teufort. Some among us would consider my passing one of the last on to you the basest sort of treason, but it really is the least I could do. The book I liberated from the meager bookshelf in our common area, it was one of the few in English. I also thought... Boredom, out here, can come easily. It is not as though there is a lending library in easy distance. It does look rather lurid, but I'm sure it will take up a spare hour or two that would otherwise be spent in the company of the gaping idiots and lunatics which populate your team. Au revoir, je vous remercie de tout coeur'

It wasn't signed, it didn't need to be. I went ahead and drank the beer-- if he wanted to kill me after the other night, he could've done it yesterday, no sense in going to the trouble of poisoning me. Besides, unpleasant though it may be, as long as my contract's good, death is cheap... and there's no part of the thank you note I'm not uncomfortable with.


	3. Chapter 3

Nothing sets quite right with me the rest of the day. Hell, the rest of the week. I keep thinking about the Spy who owes me his-- death? Or life. Bit of both. About how I can't be sure how many times over he's found me and backed out on killing me, and that's all wrong, too. Took a damn rocket to the face and got trampled by the BLU Heavy once, and I barely survived a Scout and a Pyro-- took out the one, and our own Heavy took out the other, and if our Medic hadn't been tailing him, I'd've been a dead man anyway.

For what it's all worth.

Can't blame the Doc for wanting to spend the bulk of his time on the battlefield behind the biggest walking shield he can find. Last time he tried following our Soldier instead, the damn fool rocketed off too high for the Doc to follow-- didn't hurt himself too bad, having had the Doc on him, but I'll lay fair money that a Medic who takes a load of dirt and shrapnel to the face is a Medic who doesn't spend a whole lot of time following a Soldier around after.

Anyway, battles go like they always do. Sometimes we win and sometimes we don't, and every so often nobody tips the scales before the whistle blows, so to speak.

Whole week goes by with not much sign of the Spy, outside of confused shouts and a couple sapped sentries. Then the end of the week comes, and with it a return to Teufort. Teufort, new supplies already stocking the larder, and the armory. The freedom to go into town.

Supposedly it's a dry county, but that doesn't stop the local bar from serving mercenaries on a Sunday afternoon. Don't think anything would-- they like our money, and they like not having the place shot up even more.

It's a nice day, a good day. We're back home, and a part of me-- the stupid part, reckon-- thinks or hopes this means things go back to normal.

The sun's starting to sink down, red against the blinding blue open sky. Half the little town looks like something out of a western, a boardwalk connecting the little clapboard storefronts, rockers and checkerboards on cracker barrels and hitching posts here and there. Other half's squat modern blocks, hospital looks like the school looks like the sheriff's looks like and so on.

Seems only right, in a way. Half rough-hewn wood and half gray concrete. Why should they be any different from us, shooting aside.

Anyway, there's no fighting in town. Dunno if it's in the contracts or not, can't remember if it was a written or an unwritten rule. But in town we're off the clock, and we're putting on our best faces for our employers.

The rule doesn't much matter, because when I walk into the dusty little tavern, and our eyes meet in the mirror behind the bar, neither one of us is going to make a move on the other. For a long minute, we're flabbergasted to see each other, I think. I know I am. Never seen either spy in town at all, let alone here.

He breaks eye contact first, talks to the barman. When I sit down, there's a glass of the good stuff in front of me before I can speak.

"I just came in for--"

"Your friend says he owes you one."

I move down the bar and take the stool next to his. Not much sense in pretending I don't know him now.

"Thought you bought the last round." I raise my glass to him.

"Those wretched things are like horse piss."

I raise an eyebrow and he bites back on something.

"Well, next one's on me."

Then he smiles, and it's so utterly unlike any smile I've seen on a spy before that I'm flabbergasted all over again.

It doesn't slot into place for me at all, 'til we're halfway through a bottle of wine too good to be found in a place like this, that we're flirting. Maybe 'cause he's a man, or maybe 'cause it's been too long since I flirted at all. Subtle, of course, you have to be with a thing like this, but halfway through the bottle I realize it's true.

"I still feel in your debt." He refills our glasses.

"All right. You can buy us another round after this." I smile, too easily. Tell myself not to, but it's no good. Here I am, after years alone, half-past tipsy and sitting next to a good-looking bloke, smiling's all I can seem to do.

"No, no, that... that is not enough..."

I shrug. I'd tell him to buy the next two rounds, but two more rounds is a round and a half more than I ought to go with him...

"If there's ever anything else I can do..." His eyes flicker down for just a second, just a split second, and the invitation is clear.

Too clear. Suddenly the air is stifling. I don't even hear myself, even though I know I speak-- I tell myself to say 'excuse me a minute', I feel my lips moving, but sound's just the blood pounding in my ears and a faraway ringing.

I'm flirting. With a man, in public. Don't know the local... local decency laws on that kind of thing. Not that they could prove we were flirting in a court of law, I guess. Not that the barman's going to say anything to a pair of armed mercenaries, maybe... maybe... And we had most the place to ourselves, not many people in on a Sunday, just us, the barman, and the town drunk. Everyone else content to remain on their respective bases, with their respective cheap American beers.

Know back home I'd be in trouble. Not that there ever needed to be a law, nothing the law does an angry drunken mob won't do first. Nothing like an angry drunken mob to make you long for a happy drunken mob. Happy drunken mobs are great fun. Angry drunken mobs build up if they find out you been kissing other blokes and then they bash your skull in and that's if you're lucky and I... I've been just flirting with a man in public.

Reckon small towns are alike all over, ain't they just? What's to make people here so different from there?

He finds me standing out in the street. Not much traffic Sundays, either, looks like.

"Do you want to talk?" He asks, serious.

The street's yellow over gray, thick with desert dust that fills in the potholes and blows about in little eddies when the breeze dips down low enough, and I scuff my toe against a deep crack.

"Might not be a good idea, all things considered." I say.

"If you change your mind... Through tonight, I have a room in the hotel."

He doesn't need to specify-- town's got only one.

"That's definitely not a good idea."

"To talk. If you want to. Talk. Room three-oh-two. I am going there now... the last real chance for quiet, before the working week." He lets out a rueful chuckle. "I hope you do change your mind. I feel... I feel we should discuss this, perhaps."

I really don't. I ought to say as much. Instead, I go back to the bar, finish off the bottle of wine I've already paid for, and find my feet are taking me towards the hotel.


	4. Chapter 4

My knuckles barely touch the door before it opens.

"Were you watching through the peephole all this time?" I ask, and the tease in my voice is a million times calmer than I feel.

"Pacing, actually." He smiles, smooth, but I see his hand, jittery, at his side, and maybe he's not any calmer than me. "You came at just the right moment, I was passing by the door."

"Look, I'm not sure why I came." Which is a lie. I know why I came-- what I came for-- I just don't know if I can go through with it, or if I should.

"That's fine. Perhaps it's all... sudden, for you. But I was not the only one who leaned in to the space between us, down in the bar. And your hand reached for my arm. You can play the virgin if you like, but you cannot play the naif."

"No. No, reckon not." There's a single chair. I debate sitting. Sitting means I intend to stay, but picking the chair over the bed means maybe not for too long.

"It's all right with me if it's only talk tonight. The room is mine every weekend, whether I use it or not. When I am not trapped in some sadistic medic's refrigerator." He smirks. "Again, thank you."

"Thanked me enough." My face feels hotter, an itch crawls over my skin. I'm not accustomed to gratitude, I guess. I'm not accustomed to any of this.

"If you say." He nods to me and sits, the foot of the bed. I go ahead and take the chair. "As I said, the room is mine every weekend. From Friday night to Sunday morning, I am here. If you ever wish to do more than just talk, I will be here. If you never do..."

He shrugs, as if it's no big thing to him either way, but he turns away when he does it. When his eyes meet mine again, the heat in them is something fierce.

"You'd rather I say yes."

"Of course I would rather you say yes."

"Why?"

"Why not? Are you not lonely? We do not have many opportunities out here... not many. Sometimes one gets lucky, one willing to take the risks, but... I have always been too careful, until you... Mon sauveur, you opened that door, and for that moment, you were... you were the world for me. You granted me my release, that is a big part of it. Even if we met in town, without that... I could have pretended that you were not my enemy, and greeted you politely, but I would not have taken the risk."

"I don't--" I start. Don't what? Don't want the thanks, don't want the attention, don't want the offer? I don't know what I'm doing? Well, that one's true, but how many times does it need saying?

"My apologies, of course. We won't speak of the... incident, further. Needless to say it occurred. And so I had to notice you. To think of you. To see you when I close my eyes, sometimes. So I took the risk-- and it is a risk, isn't it? Whenever I am outside my own country, it seems so... You express an interest in another man, and he takes it as an affront." He rolls his eyes, like this reaction is ridiculous and it's normal to just let a bloke pick you up.

"Yeah, well. I don't take that sort of risk myself, normally."

"If a little thing like that threatens a man's masculinity, then it must not be a very certain thing. But not you... your masculinity is a real thing. You live a difficult life, not because circumstances force you, but because the rewards are sweeter and the lessons learned are richer, when the work is bloody and the life is hard. You are professional, your work is clean, and I admit, I have been impressed by you. But, as I said, had we not... met, the way that we did... I doubt I would have approached you this way."

"Yeah, well... you've done some good work yourself, haven't you? At my expense, often as not."

He laughs. "Not quite that often. But yes, perhaps more than some of the others. You are a tempting target. You are so focused... but you put up a good fight if I tip my hand too early. May I be honest?"

"Too late not to be, isn't it now?"

One of his legs stretches out, toe of his shoe just touching against mine. "Once, I let you hear me coming, when I was close enough to stop you from getting at your blade right away. I was curious..."

"Yeah, you're real curious, ain't ya?"

"Who would come out on top, if it was just you, and me. No guns, no knives."

I remembered. His clattering across the floor as he grabbed my wrist to keep me from taking up the kukri, the surprising strength behind his spare frame-- those suits must hide some sinewy muscle, I wouldn't've guessed at it. Of course, there's more to me as well that he might not have counted on, and even if he thought he started at an advantage, I was able to topple us. I remember I got him on his back when that pyro showed up...

"We didn't get much time to test that, did we?" I chuckle.

"We could test it now. We will not be interrupted."

"Dunno if I can do this, mate." I stand.

He rises as well, touches my arm. "I understand. The war is between us, always. I can understand not wanting to... to embark on this. But I will be here, every weekend, whether you come or not. So, just remember. You can always change your mind."

"Haven't made my mind up yet."

"You can still change it. You can always change it." Gloved fingers slip down to my wrist. The want's still there in his eyes, but when I look away from those, I see his mouth, and I'm not sure which is a bigger threat.

"I'm going to leave now." I pull away, but I don't pull away hard. "But next weekend I'll be sober. And I'll think about it."

"Mm. Perhaps it is a good decision to make sober." He smiles, and it's a little sad and a little not. Hard to pin down, very French I guess, or at least very Spy. "At the very least, if we are both sober next weekend, it means the performance will not suffer."

Ah yes. The performance. Which I mean to not want, I always mean not to want it, not to want it from him. From any man, I don't mean to want a man, but when I said I'd think about it, it wasn't blowing him off. I'll be thinking about it whether I want to or not. I've seen the inside of his habitual weekend room now. I know what the bedspread would be like, and the walls. I know what his eyes look like when he means to entice, how his voice sounds. There's enough I don't know, but my mind is itching to fill in the blanks. I'll have enough long, dull hours alone in the week to imagine it all, too.

I leave. At least I have the resolve to get that far. I'm drunk enough to be honest, though, and not enough to start lying to myself so I'd believe me. I'll be back next week, and it's not me making a plan, it's just... Day turns to night, winter turns to spring. Winds come and rains come and I'll go back to the hotel, it feels an unavoidable part of nature. There's no putting the monsters back into Pandora's box. All she's got is hope. And now I've got this truth about myself, and all I got left is this. Next weekend, I'll be back.


	5. Chapter 5

Another week goes by in a blur of blood and gunpowder. Sometimes more of the one, sometimes more of the other-- mine, anyway. If you look at everyone, imagine it evens out.

I like my job, and I'm damn good at it. I've never found myself looking forward to a weekend like I do this one. Anticipating, yeah. Fearing it a little. Fearing myself, more than anything. My life wasn't supposed to go like this.

Work was supposed to just... take the place of everything, really. No one would ask any questions, because why would I be married, me an assassin? Sure, there are some who settle down, or at least pretend to, but when I'm not piercing someone's gray matter, I'm usually out in the wilderness living off the land, not bathing regularly. It's the kind of lifestyle where your own mother will give up hope of you giving her grandchildren without too much of a fuss and without anybody ever asking That Question.

Thursday I think I hear him again-- I haven't all week, nor smelled his smokes-- but again there's no sign, and for all I know this time it really was our own Spy. I've been camped out near enough where he might have to go, if he was wounded and couldn't get to the Doc quick enough. But the thought that it might have been not Our Spy but My Spy is enough. He's in my head.

All through dinner I'm distracted. Not that anyone takes any notice. Some days I'm just quiet, it's no great surprise to the team if I don't join in the chatter.

I keep thinking about the bottle of wine disappearing between us, his knee bumping mine, all the little touches I shouldn't have braved, and those ones he did. I think about his eyes, in the hotel room, and two gloved fingertips sliding down past the pulse of my wrist, that was the very last touch before I left him.

I've traced over the spot a hundred times since then, but there's nothing... nothing magic to it, it was just a touch, half-accident as his hand slipped away from my arm. Just the ghost of leather on my skin...

It can't be tomorrow night fast enough, and as much as a part of me still hates it's true, that's all I'm thinking as I leave dinner half-eaten and go back to my van. I think about him, everything about him, with my own fingers playing over my wrist until the mix of memory and imagination is enough that I need my fingers playing over something else.

Maybe there's no shame in this... after all, am I really going to kid myself? He made his thoughts on the matter clear, no reason to think he hasn't done the same, and thought about me.

Would he? He would, wouldn't he? And what, think about the bare minutes we grappled before he got set on fire the once? It wasn't much time, but it's about as much physical contact as we've ever had...

Probably got a good enough imagination of his own. Could be he thinks all kinds of things. Wish I knew what. Wish I could ask. Even tomorrow night, I won't. Even if there's not too much shame in this, I think there would be in trying to ask him about it. That seems worse than anything we might actually do, asking.

But when I finally do get it out, I do think about him, alone in some private room on his own base and doing the same. Imagine he's thinking about me.

I tried not thinking about him, at first, and I gave up when it didn't work, but sometimes it seems like even that's not enough. I don't know what his face looks like...

I don't know what the rest of him looks like, either, but somehow I can imagine all that. I can never imagine his face, it... spoils it.

Well, not spoils it-spoils it. I still think about him, I still finish up and have a smoke and sleep well as I ever do after.

It would be better if I could picture his face, though. It would be better.


	6. Chapter 6

"I didn't think you'd come." He admits, letting the door swing open. His lips twist up to one side, wry, and there's something in his eyes like the knife's edge of hope and disappointment. Can't blame him for worrying I'll bolt, I guess.

I think about lying, but I don't. I think about making a bad joke, but I don't do that either. In the end, I just shrug and sit down in the chair again. He stands, turns to the window for a moment and twists his hands before turning back to me. There's something different about him, and it takes a minute for me to realize he must be clean-shaven. In the little window around his mouth I can see it. He never has been on the battlefield-- guess none of us much are, not most of the week.

But it's the weekend. And even if he hasn't been expecting me, he's been hoping.

"I feel like I should offer you something," He says, apologetic chuckle. "But the hotel... he is not long on amenities. You'll have to forgive me for being a less than perfect host."

"Well, you're offering me one thing." I say.

He laughs. "I am. More than one thing, have some imagination."

"Been thinking about it."

"You've been thinking about having an imagination?" He grins.

"Ass. I thought about all of it. I want to, yeah. We can do whatever... whatever you think-- I haven't got experience, with other-- We can... I'll follow your lead for a while, I guess is what'll happen. But only if you let me do one thing."

A look of displeasure crossed his face. "This once. Only this once. I... could endure anything once. How would you like me?"

"Just stand there," I move to him, cup his face in one hand, feel the sharp angle of his cheekbone through the fabric of his mask before I let my hand slip down. I loosen his tie, tug the edge of the mask free from his collar. "It's all right?"

"You want the balaclava off?"

"Yeah," My answer comes out in a harsh breath and I can feel a tremor that I focus all my will on stopping before it reaches my fingers. I don't want to feel this much, over something so... so stupid. So small. But it's like I've been in cotton wool all my life and never felt before, and now my nerves are stripped bare. It's all raw, and I don't even know... if this is why I never dared, or if the fact I never dared before is why it's all so much now.

He nods, and I roll the mask up another centimeter, another... his neck is long, skinny. Before I pull the mask off completely I stop, bury my nose alongside that milk-pale throat and just inhale. Sweat, soap, and smoke. And aftershave.

"And then?" He asks. I hear the rumble of his voice deep in his throat, feel the vibration when I let my lips touch his skin.

"Then I guess you take over."

He pulls back. "All you wanted was to remove it? Cher..."

His hand covers mine, still gripping the little bit of fabric, and his eyes flutter closed for a second as it comes off.

"All I wanted." I get the whole picture for the first time.

His hair... well, I guess I expected him to be shaved down bald, but he's got dark hair, black, a mess from being under the mask all the time. He releases my hand, both of his trying to straighten it, all in vain and I don't mind it. There's a small flat mole on one cheek, but aside from that, no real surprises... the topography was always clear, I guess.

His skin, though... milk white, all of it. Everything that's under the mask day in and day out is pale, and when I cup his cheek again, soft.

"I said I could endure anything once. Though I'll admit it's a blow to my vanity... you could have told me you wondered what I looked like a week ago and I'd have been ready for you. Now I am a mess... and the tan lines are unfortunate..."

I toss my hat down on the chair I'd vacated. "Nah, it's not so bad. I... kind of interesting, isn't it? Besides, I'm no looker."

"Au contraire..." He leans into my space, fits our mouths together and for a moment I freeze. But kissing's kissing... once you got the mechanics worked out, it doesn't matter what's on the other end of the lips.

I mean, I still don't know what to do with my hands, like being fifteen all over again, but I know how to kiss. I mean, for someone out-of-practice as I am, I like to think I do a decent job of it.

Spy works his arms up around my neck, and I settle for putting my hands on his waist. Still feels like being fifteen again, except of course I never wanted to do with my first kiss what I want to do with him. My problem with girls was never an overabundance of libido...

He doesn't put his head on my shoulder, when the kiss ends-- Dot had, the fifteen year old girl fifteen year old me had tried kissing-- but he stays leaned up against me.

"I think you're handsome. For a bushman." He teases. "No, I... I do think you're... You have a magnetism. You are interesting, to me. I'm sure I don't need to tell you the kind of thoughts I have about your hands sometimes..."

"You could tell me." I offer.

He smiles. "Oh? On Monday... I am going to find you, on the battlefield. I will not hurt you. I will not bother you at all. But I will watch you work..." The smile fades, his eyes half-close and his breath speeds. "So focused, and those hands... cradling the length of your rifle... the absent caress when you must wait too long for a good target. The slow way you load a new round when you have the luxury of time, and the way your finger squeezes the trigger, sure..."

"Sounds like you've... done that before."

"Temps du temps." He shrugs.

"How'd we wind up like this?"

"Il n'y a que les montagnes qui ne se recontrent jamais." He sighs.

"Uh-huh." I back him towards the bed, the one step it takes. "That's encouraging, then."

I don't hear him, just feel the soft chuff of laughter against my neck as he leans into me once more. "It is, in a way. Only the mountains never meet."

"Ah."

"The rest is fate." He kisses my throat, fingers working my shirt buttons.


	7. Chapter 7

"What did you think I wanted from you?" I nip at his jaw, figure there's plenty of space I could mark him up as mine and no one'd be the wiser. Tan lines deep as they are, he doesn't take the mask off on weekends. "When you said you could endure anything once."

"I don't know," He lies.

"Come on."

"No, really. Your trepidation... I thought perhaps you had some deviancy in mind if you were that worried."

"Come on, what'd you think?" I slide his tie off. I'd like to pash on more of that neck, but I make the both of us wait on that 'til I get an answer. Just a contrary stubborn bastard sometimes, reckon...

"I don't know. That you'd want to piss on me or something."

I drop the tie. "Why the hell would I want to do that?"

"How should I know? I am not the one who hoards jars of the stuff!" He catches it before it can flutter to the floor.

"That is a tactical... battle application, of certain resources. It's got nothing to do with sexual... fetishes." I huff, in the moment before the rest clicks. "Wait, you would've let me?"

"Well, it's not like it would be an entirely new experience." He shrugs. "I'd rather do it in bed than right before being shot or stabbed, I don't see how... Well, I mean... I said I'd endure it, so what of that?"

"You must really want to fuck me." I whistle.

"Yes." He drags me in close by the front of my shirt and falls back, pulls us both down onto the mattress. "I want to. I want you to fuck me. I want to suck you... I want to touch you, and look at you. All of that."

Getting undressed is a struggle after that, because no matter what I tell my hands to do, they fumble, and no matter what I tell the rest of me to do, my body just wants to tangle up with his.

I'm not used to lying in bed with a body so not-too-different from mine. Not used to lying in bed with anybody, but I mean I've done it with girls, a couple times. Mostly hasn't been worth the trouble, when that part of me I never acknowledged would spend the whole tumble wishing they were blokes, and girls need so much talking to, and I'd be fine romancing someone if I knew how the hell to do it, sure, but I'm not that big a talker, and I like my own company, and my hobbies, I suppose, do not make for good small talk.

And anyway, there's no mistaking the Spy for a girl. His shoulders may not be so broad as the suits make 'em look, but they're still a man's shoulders, broad enough-- broad compared to the rest of him, tapering down into a right skinny thing, but there's the sinewy muscle, and dark hair that stands out against the pale skin he keeps covered.

Everything about him is at least momentarily fascinating. I run my fingers over his knobby knees and through his chest hair, and I guess somehow... I don't know, somehow I thought he'd be less hairy than me. He is, but not by too much.

Seems he thinks as highly of me, 'cause his hands are everywhere, and his mouth, and I don't know if it's merely my general lack of experience or the basic difference between the sexes, but he does things no girl's ever done. Things one might do, if you asked her enough times, maybe, but also things you wouldn't think of asking 'em and things I doubt they'd think of doing.

He starts by getting me on my back, and half my brain's screaming at me not to let him, and the other half is ready to roll with it. Under the circumstances, I go with the half of my brain that wants to get laid. The half that keeps me alive during the working week will be right some other time, but not now.

The Spy's mouth slides off mine, he doesn't lift away when the kiss ends, just lets his lips trail down my throat and his teeth scrape over my skin in one long wet glide 'til he hits my chest. His hands are moving up and down my ribcage, hard passes that dig into muscle and make me moan. His mouth is getting involved with a nipple, which also makes me moan. Which I didn't expect, but I like it. Even when he threatens to use his teeth again, I like it. Too much, I like it.

His hands slip lower, heels fitting into my hips and there's a moment of naivete stunning even for me-- 'cause however unversed I may be in the practical sense, you accumulate a lifetime of dirty jokes and exaggerated stories, you learn some things-- I have no idea what it is he means to do.

I figure it out before he does it, and before I remember he went and told me he wanted to, among all those other things he's wanted. I figure it out when he looks me over with this soft little growling sigh, when his eyes flicker and his tongue swipes over his lip, and my understanding of the situation catches up to where I've been coasting on pure sensation.

He sucks cock like he enjoys it-- and for all I know, he does. I hope he does, because in a few minutes I'll be doing the same for him, and I'm hoping it's enjoyable. In very few minutes, if he keeps up like he is, with his tongue swirling up just, just so, and the moans and wet slurps and the hot breath from his nostrils against the spit he leaves behind every time his head bobs up and it's just those hands that keep my hips from following, his hands on my hips and the weight of his body on my thighs for a moment before I spread them wide for him to lie between.

"Gonna," I manage, all the warning he gets.

His hair's more a mess than it was when the mask first came off, his lips swollen and his cheeks flushed, and there's a gob of white that drips down off his lower lip and onto his chin in slow motion. When I go to wipe it off, he sucks my thumb into his mouth, and it's a deeper, filthier groan than I've heard out of him yet accompanying the act.

For a moment I'm worried I won't be any good, that I won't like doing it, but the smell of his sweat when I get my nose buried in the crease of his thigh is heady and sharp in the best way, and the sight of his cock lying thick and dark against his belly sets the tingling heat to curling in the pit of mine, and the worry passes. If I'm no good at giving head, well, it's like anything.

You practice and you learn.


	8. Chapter 8

Sunday night... Hardly seems possible it could be Sunday night. That Friday and Saturday already went by in a blur much nicer than the blur of the working week, one of sweat and skin this time, and at least I don't have to explain myself come Monday. My team's used to me disappearing on weekends, usually off into the desert to be on my own a bit.

Still, I'm always back by Monday. Can't just fall asleep here tonight.

I watch the smoke curl lazily up towards the ceiling, where it floats and disappears against all the cracks and water stains the hotel bed has seen over the years.

Spy's been humming lazily to himself, some tune caught in his head. Over the weekend I've learned he does sometimes, but only when he's relaxing-- or at least, as relaxed as he can be.

"Moi, je t'offrirai des perles de pluie venues de pays ou n'il pleut pas. Je creuserai la terre jusqu'apres ma mort, pour couvrir ton corps..." The hum becomes words, and the words become a heavy sigh. "It will be Monday."

"Yeah."

"Do you need to go before it gets late?"

"Should." I nod.

"You can use the bath before you go. You smell like sex." He smiles a bit, touches me. "How soon?"

"Too soon." I pull his hand away. "What, a whole weekend's not enough for you?"

"No."

I kiss his palm. "That's a frenchman for you, oversexed. Hey... hey, there's next weekend."

"Yes." The smile comes back. "Go. Clean up and get out of here before I can molest you again."

I don't know how good the rest of the hotel is, but at least his room has it's own bath, and I'm a little too tall to fit really easily in the copper bathtub, but I fit well enough to get clean, and I don't want to relax too deep.

I leave the door open, so I can see the bed in the bathroom mirror. So we can talk.

"What do we do 'til then? Next weekend, I mean."

"What can we do?" I watched his reflection flop back onto the mattress, even saw a plume of smoke when he exhaled hard.

"I just mean... I mean... No one can know about this. Not your team and not mine. And it'd look better if you take a stab at me now and then."

"I cannot. I could not, not since the refrigerator, you know that." He sits up again, his arms resting on his knees, bedsheet a big tent around his folded legs.

"Well, try not to let on." I finish scrubbing up as best I can, but I don't know it's any better. Smell of sex is gone, but my clothes will still stink of french cigarettes and I smell more like milled hotel soap than camping in the desert. Dammit...

"And you. Take care." He's rising from the bed as I come out of the bath in a towel. The sheet's still on the bed, or mostly on it.

We're both naked, but the kiss, when he catches my lips with his, isn't the naked sort. There's no heat, no pull, just... sweetness, almost.

"Yeah. Always do. And you."

"Always."

"I like you without the mask, you know." I tousle his hair. Oughta just walk out and here I am trying to find things to say to keep me here.

"I like you without a great many things, but you should probably put them all on now." He raises an eyebrow and tosses me my shirt, and I hadn't even seen him pick it up.

Honestly, I hadn't even known where it had landed, after the last time I gave up on getting dressed and tore it off. All this weekend he's had food sent up, and I've hid in the bathroom 'til the staff's gone again. Safer than the two of us walking in and out of a hotel room together all the time.

Sun's only halfway down when I finally do get out of the hotel. When I get back to the base, Scout's running around playing catch with himself in the little bit of light left, and Truckie's got a lawn chair out in the little yard back around the battlements, watching Pyro cook something or other to death on the open air grill.

"Pecan wood." Truckie nods towards the grill. "Beef brisket. Course, Pyro don't go in for low and slow, so if that's what you like, you're out of luck."

"Yeah, and there's no sauce." Scout says.

"Son, if the meat's good, you don't need sauce."

"I ate." I say. At the hotel, with the BLU Spy... just bits left over from a large lunch... We'd eat, root, sleep, wake up, start over... Talk a bit, as well. Talk about books or films between bites of breakfast, talk weapons as we lay tangled in the sheets sharing a smoke. Talk about nothing as one of us started to drift off... and now that the weekend's over, I'm not much hungry.

"Oh."

"Smells good, though." I say, giving the Pyro an encouraging thumbs up.

"Well, maybe it'll be good for morale... First dinner was ruined. Canteen done blew up. Shipment coming in for Demo and the shipment coming in for the kitchen got shifted around some."

"You shoulda seen it, it was awesome." Scout nods. "A can of green beans went straight through the Doc's head!"

"Yowch."

"Death by green beans. I saw everything."

"Only one there when it happened avoided a trip through respawn." Truckie snorts.

"Dodging skills, man. I got 'em."

"Yeah, well... enjoy your dinner, I... I think I'll just get to sleep. Early to bed and early to rise, yeah." Not that it's all that early.

I pass the others, as they head towards the no-doubt thoroughly cooked beef brisket, but it goes as I'd hoped-- no one says anything about my being gone all of the weekend, and no one says anything about my skipping out on a team meal. Still technically the weekend, after all.

I peek in on the canteen-- the kitchen beyond that's unharmed, looks like, but the tables are no longer tables, the chairs are no longer chairs, several windows are blown out, and ain't a surface not coated with something questionable.

Nice to know life's not boring when I'm not around, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: In case anyone wonders, the bit of song Spy sort of mumbles to himself in bed there is from 'Ne Me Quitte Pas'.
> 
> English versions of the song lose a lot of the poetry (so it's just as well Spy's French), and often lose a lot of the original feeling as well. The faithful-but-difficult-to-turn-into-music translation as follows:
> 
> 'Me, I will give you pearls of rain in a place where it never rains. I will dig the earth until after my death, to cover your body.'


	9. Chapter 9

I don't expect to see him again until the weekend. It's all right, I guess-- went long as I did without anything, waiting for the weekend's nothing compared to going years, to going a lifetime, without having anything like what he's given me.

Monday goes slow, for both sides. I do my bit to keep BLU from advancing with much success, but they do their bit to keep us from getting anything done as well. Big stalemate of a day all around.

Monday night the team eats in shifts outside, cold cuts and canned green beans that may or may not have made a trip through the Doc's skull. The shift not eating gets to clean up the kitchen.

Scout grumbles about it, but he works fast. Our own Spy pulls faces and complains about dirtying up his suit. Everyone else goes about things with quiet resignation. Well, actually, Pyro might be enjoying himself... it's hard to tell, but he's moving about and being efficient, and he's not kicking up a fuss. And Truckie whistles every now and then.

When both shifts have finished eating, everyone cleans together. Soldier barks a few orders now and then, but he works as hard as anyone, maybe harder, so nobody much balks about it. I wasn't even on base for the accident, but I like having the place operational, so I pitch in without calling attention to the fact.

After that's done with, the team moves en masse towards the showers, and since I'm half crusted-over in day-old creamed corn, I go along as well. Spy and Pyro are missing, of course. Don't know when or where they wash up, and aside from the same idle curiosity as anyone else, don't much care. Hell, I don't always hit the showers with the others, if I make it through a battle without getting bloodied up. Our Spy at least I know showers, but with Pyro there's really no telling.

It's dusk, when I make it out to my van at last, a line of gold at the horizon, the sky going mauve and fading gray like a bruise. My eyes are tired, and the rest of me could do with a lie down as well, but I'm awake enough to notice the basket back on my bonnet.

It's the same one, and how he got it back I'll never know. I don't know what I did with it, after the first time. Tossed it off somewhere maybe?

There's a tube of zinc oxide, another folded letter on pale blue paper, and a battered copy of 'The Great Escape'. I tuck the book under my arm and open the letter.

'I wrote this, not knowing if I would be able to wait for you. I shouldn't make it any harder to avoid suspicion, should I? But I want to see you.

It's only been a day, I know, I know. I don't know how to talk to anyone here, though, and even if I did, I could never talk to them about this, so...

It's not as though my team is entirely awful, not at all. I get on well enough with our Medic, and with the Heavy that follows him around. I see little of your own opposite number. He is no you, but I have nothing against him. I suppose it's just the Americans I cannot get along with... Well, not that it matters.

Another book, of better quality than the last now that I am not so constrained in my options. And use the zinc oxide-- my tan lines may be hideous, but your permanent burn looks painful.

Another time I will come out to try and see you, if only briefly. Not tomorrow, that is too soon. But I will try to see you, on Thursday. Tu me manques terriblement.'

Again, no signature. Again, not like he needed to.

I should try and find a French-to-English dictionary if he's going to sign off this way all the time. Not that my hopes are high for finding one in Teufort. Nor are my hopes high for keeping what he says in my head long enough to look it up-- in the time we were together, if he was far gone enough to lapse back into French, I was usually pretty far gone myself.

This time I bring the basket inside and stick it on the shelf. The letter I shove under my mattress, where the first had somehow wound up. Not likely to be found there, anyway. And if I want to keep them, so what? It's my business, what letters I keep. My business how I feel about the man who writes them.


	10. Chapter 10

Tuesday we get our backsides handed to us on a bleeding platter.

I come to in Respawn after taking a shotgun blast in the back-- damn Scout, reckon-- to see the Doc shaking himself out and looking sour.

"Which one got you."

"The Spy. Always the Spy. This is ten times now." He follows that up with something German and angry.

I don't really know what to say there. Politic thing would probably be to keep my mouth shut, since I can't exactly side with the Doc on this one. Even if I wasn't sleeping with the bloke who's been killing him, you keep a man's head alive in your fridge and you kind of give him a right to be angry with you. But I can't say any of that, of course. Doc's the one who's on my team, after all.

A moment later there's a sound-that's-not-a-sound that rips through your head and leaves your skull buzzing, and a moment of glowing red, and the Heavy's with us.

"Well, guess I should get back up there." I tip my hat to the two of them.

"Right, right. Yes."

"With me, Doktor!" Heavy roars, and then he's tearing off towards the loudest part of the fight with the Doc in tow.

Too much time between them for my Spy to have taken them both out. Heavy probably did him in after he stabbed the Doc, then couldn't hold up against... dunno, BLU's Heavy, maybe, or their Soldier, someone. But they respawn on the other side too. Nothing to worry about, and no sense in being sore with my teammates over it.

I mean, long as I've been here, I don't even get too sore with the BLU team, not unless it's a bad death.

I find a new perch out on the battlements, far enough from where I was last killed, but not too far out. Base at Teufort's got a couple good spots for sniping.

It may be a bad day for us on the battlefield, but with the kitchen fixed back up, it's a pretty good night for dinner, and Wednesday's a good morning for breakfast as well.

Well, I thought so, at any rate. I'm not particularly surprised when, Wednesday morning, Scout merely pushes his oatmeal around with his spoon and whinges about how whenever Pyro does breakfast, at least he gets the bacon right.

"It's good for you, Private." Soldier barks at him.

"It tastes like crap."

"That's how you know it's good for you!"

"Oatmeal." Demo sniffs, drawing himself up to his full height. "Tastes just great."

"Oats are for horses." Our Spy forgoes breakfast for coffee and cigarettes.

"Aye, and a horse is stronger and faster than you are, isn't he?"

"Well, it could be worse. The Texan makes bread out of corn. Corn isn't even fit for horses, corn is food for chickens and pigs."

"Corn is the vegetable of red-blooded, God-fearing Americans!" Soldier shouts, banging a fist on the table. "It was good enough for granddad and it's good enough for me, now eat your oatmeal like a man or how can you expect to kill anyone?"

"I will make my own breakfast, thank you, and I shall be perfectly capable of killing many men."

"Heard your opposite number's back on the battlefield." Truckie says to him, off-handed.

"He is."

"Wonder why he hasn't been as much of a thorn in my side as he was before his little sabbatical."

Doc folds his arms and frowns. "Pettiness. Ever since he managed to unplug himself, he has been focusing all his energy on stabbing me in the back."

At least he believes Spy managed to unplug himself... at least there's that. Maybe he won't even remember that I was in his fridge before then.

"Un... plug?" Truckie lifts up his goggles to squint at the Doc.

"I was keeping his head alive, for science. Well, I gathered some data, anyway."

"Doc, if you need heads for science, you just have to ask! My men are ready to aid in the fight, and if that means becoming a grotesque medical experiment, then so be it!"

"No, thank you, Soldier." Even the Doc was unsettled by that offer. "I cannot duplicate the experiment on a head which is no longer living."

"I could go out and get you a fresh one."

"I don't think the work can be replicated. But please, decapitate as many of the enemy as you wish."

"Sorry, wait, are we just gonna act like this is normal?" Scout asks. "Nevermind, I forgot who I was talking to... You guys are all crazy."

"My score must be settled off the battlefield as well." Our Spy stands, smooths his jacket out. "Speaking of the battlefield, you have not much time to prepare, gentlemen."

That's the one that chills me, the idea of scores that need settling, the idea of taking it off the battlefield. The Doc doesn't worry me-- however he got Spy's head, he doesn't believe it can be done again, and he's probably right. And he doesn't suspect me of having a hand in things. But I don't know what it is our own Spy is talking about, and I don't like it...


	11. Chapter 11

Thursday's good. Team manages to turn around our abysmal performance on the battlefield of late, score some victories. Maybe in the grand scheme of things they don't matter-- somehow I doubt they do-- but even meaningless victories are good for morale.

And Thursday night...

Well, Thursday night is promising. I beg off eating with the rest of the team, and no one's suspicion is raised. I eat with the rest of the mob on and off, but I'm as likely to disappear during a celebration as I am when we're all licking our wounds. I grab a couple sandwiches and head out to my van, stomach churning and antsy.

It's risky, meeting on our base, but it's not any riskier than him sneaking over to leave little tokens... at least, that's how I rationalize it to myself. He's been in and out twice with no consequence.

"There you are." I hear his whisper, even though he's nowhere to be seen. There's a little disturbance of dirt, though, that shows me where he's standing. "You didn't keep me waiting long. What will the neighbours say?"

"Neighbours won't say a thing." I open the back of the camper, feel him pass me. "I like my own company. Team knows it. It's fine."

"In that respect we are the same." There's blue smoke everywhere, the cloud from him uncloaking, and a little wisp rising up from the cigarette he drops into my ashtray. "No one will miss me. My team did not even notice that I never respawned and was living in a disembodied state in a RED refrigerator. They will not miss me for half an evening."

We both roll our eyes over it for a moment. Funny to think they wouldn't notice his absence, but then again, if I didn't see our Spy for a week or more at a time, I might not think on it, either. He's sneaky and solitary enough of the time. Weekends he goes off and sees some lady of his, and during the week he likes spending time with the team less than I do. I mean, I may not be the most social person around, but I try to be friendly-like. And I believe in... I don't know, in taking care of my team, I guess. Funny, after spending so much time as a lone assassin I thought I'd shaken it off, but being back on a team, even a weird one like ours, I guess all the non-lethal lessons from Nasho come back to a person. Mateship and stuff. When you're out in the desert shooting at people and getting shot at, it is sort of important, having someone who you can depend on with your life, even cheap as death is in this war.

If it came down to it... if it came down to choosing between my loyalty to my team and my professionalism towards my employers, and the BLU Spy? I'm not sure I know what I'd do. I put a lot of stock in my professionalism. And even if I like to avoid them at times, I do genuinely like a couple blokes on the team.

And the Spy?

Maybe it doesn't bear thinking on right now, anyway.

"You want to eat?" I toss him one of the sandwiches.

"It's not what I came for." He smiles. "But if you went to the trouble."

There's not much room in the camper. There's always been enough for me, in terms of room and in terms of necessities. A bed, a nightstand where I keep a lamp and an ashtray. A shelf with a few books and stuff for coffee. A footlocker for everything else. It doesn't leave much room for maneuvering, or for anything much, but it's no trouble to sit side by side on the bed.

When it comes to sandwiches, the only firm rule on base is not to touch the Heavy's. Think that's about the only firm rule in the kitchens at all. But there was enough leftover brisket from a couple nights back. Charred black on the outside, but mostly tender enough. Truckie was right about it, anyway-- it was good enough not to need sauce. And it worked for sandwiches.

"You did well today." Spy said.

"Yeah, guess we were due for a turnaround."

"You." He tapped my chest. "You took our Medic down at just the right moment, you got the Scout before he could get to you..."

"Creeping around watching me again?"

"It is the nice thing about the new watch." He held up his wrist. The watch was a bit clunky-- then again, so was our Spy's, even though it was different, so I imagine the cloaking device takes up space-- but it had a leather band, fairly nice. "All I have to do is keep still."

"Mine just tells me what time it is." I shrug.

"Mine does not." He frowns. "It is the one drawback, none of them do. Well, not important. How may I thank you for dinner?"

The frown turns into a smile, slow and slinky, and we're kicking off boots and shoes as he pulls me down on top of him on the bed, drags me in by my shirt and wraps himself around me.

I could do this forever, just kiss him, with his body pushing up against mine. The feel of his muscles straining, like a fight almost, except he's not trying to stab me or me him, and his hands dig into my arms, his heel presses down against my arse, and when we kiss now his stubble drags and catches on mine...

Of course, trying to do this forever would lead to a fairly anti-climactic ending for the evening... Pleasant, no doubt, but I've learned a few pleasanter things over last weekend. I push myself off him and fumble to get undressed, watch him slip out of his suit, graceful as you like. I'm the one to strip him of his mask, though, and his gloves.

"How do you want me, then?" He stretches out on my bed, beautiful. I let my eyes trace over him, my hands as well, the slim body and long limbs, all tone and no bulk, pale and soft but not unmasculine, no... there's still the dark hair, a couple old scars, the angles and planes fitting together just right.

I scoot back to kneel on the footlocker, my body lying between his legs, my hands on his hip and my nose buried in the crease of his thigh where I breathe him in deep. Touch my tongue to the skin to chase down the musky sweat of arousal and a day's long, bloody work. No fancy hotel soaps, just this. Just him at his most primal, sharp and strong.

I love the smell of him, and the taste-- was glad to find I did, and the solid weight of his cock in my hand or in my mouth. Awkward at first, but not so bad, nerves were the worst part of giving my first blowjob. I love the way his fingers scrabble at my shoulder and hair and the sounds he makes. I love sliding my palm along his thigh to feel the muscle tremble in the moment before he finishes, and the way he licks his own mess off my face in the moment after, when he's sated but still wanton. I love how he looks when he's fucked out on his back with his cock going limp and still spit-wet, with his eyes glassy and his mouth slack and those legs splayed every which way.

I love how he smacks me lightly on the arse and drags me up to straddle him, how he moans around me and urges me to fuck his mouth hard and how he grabs at me and touches me when I do. I love how his breath is hot, how his mouth is hot. I love how his eyelids flicker like he's dreaming and how he swallows around me like he's begging for it.

I love him.

I come.

He lights two cigarettes, one of his and one of mine. My chest is still heaving, from sex and from the revelation I'd been dodging this whole time.

"I should go soon." He murmurs.

"Guess so." I touch his cheek. Want to tell him and don't want to tell him.

"The pied-a-terre... Saturday, if not tomorrow?" He turns into my touch, kisses my palm. "I'll see you then?"

"Saturday." I promise. "Tomorrow's too soon, but Saturday. I-- You've got the bluest eyes."

Dammit.

"Saturday." He kisses me again before dressing.

All right. All right, I got away with it. I got away with being sappy and stupid and noticing his eyes.

Hell, maybe Saturday I could get away with telling him I love him.


	12. Chapter 12

Friday night I eat with the team-- that is, whoever hasn't already headed out for the weekend. Our Spy's gone, and our Demo, but the others are around. Makes up for my lack of being sociable the night before, and we won a few good rounds near the end of the day, so at least I'm present for some celebrating.

It's easy enough to act like I always have. Happy to make a little small talk, if not adept at it. Happy to listen, if a little distracted. All right company, but around in small doses. If my reasons for being distracted or reticent aren't the same as they always have been, well, none of the others can read my mind. And it's never hard to let the Scout pull focus, he'll talk anyone's ear off.

I head out early on Saturday. By the time I get into town, the sun's high, and you can see the heat shimmer on the roof of the squat, concrete building across the street from the hotel, so that looking at the red mountains beyond is like looking through water, the shape and even the colour distorting slightly.

Inside the hotel, my Spy. Once I'm in the room, the door locked behind me, we're kissing like it's been two months instead of two days.

The blinds only half-close, and he stops me from taking his mask off until after we move past the window to the bed. Almost stupid of me, but from the bed I can look out the window and see nothing, no vantage points, just sky. Of course, he must have known that, must have known all the angles before he ever invited me back here. He knew where not to let the mask come off, after all. And being a professional paranoid bastard, besides.

"I... I have something, if you want..." He reaches under the pillow with his hands shaking, comes back pressing a condom into my hand.

"Thought you liked it messy."

"When I am sucking cock, yes." He shrugs, totally blunt about it, and I still find it strange he can talk about that kind of thing without wincing, without looking over his shoulder even when there's no one there, without censoring himself at all in fear of recrimination. "Of course, I assume you were subject to the same rigorous health examinations on joining RED as I was upon joining BLU, so it really doesn't bother me if you prefer not to use one, but I find it makes cleaning up easier."

There had been exams, and a twenty-five year old film strip about the clap we had to watch-- remember Soldier applauded politely when it was over and the Doc practically foamed at the mouth over how many inaccuracies there were, but yeah. Even if I were the type to pick up a girl now and then, I'd still be pretty certain I didn't have anything. Didn't even think about asking him, but I guess he must be fine if he's thought of things like that...

Wait.

Did he imply... not blowjobs?

The jar of petroleum jelly in his hand speaks to this being the case.

"Of course, we don't have to." Another shrug. "I'm sure I can put this to many other uses. But if you wanted to fuck me..."

I do, I do, I do... damn me, I do, but I hardly want to have to say I've never done it before. Do I even have to say it? Pretty sure my inexperience up to this point has been clear enough, it's not really a wild leap of intuition to think I'd never had anal sex.

"Sniper?" He slides his hand up my chest, around back of my neck so he can pull me down into a kiss. "How do you want me?"

I fumble the lid off the jar. "Show me... how you like it. And I'll do that."

He talks me through it, reaches around behind himself to grab my wrist and move me when he has to, when I hit something inside him and he can't remember the words in English a minute. At first it doesn't even seem like it ought to be possible, even though I know it is. It certainly doesn't seem like it ought to be all that good for him, but he asked me to do it, and not the other way around.

I don't even have it in him when the 'I love you' escapes me-- at least then I could explain it away, or it would just go on ignored as the kind of thing you say when you've got your dick in someone, but I didn't. I was watching the sweat beading up on his back and it wasn't even the sex that made me say it, it was the fact that it was his back, that he'd turned his back on me without any hesitation and the knowledge that I'd do the same, probably had a few times last weekend.

It's not in the nature of men in our lines of work to trust. I don't even like to turn my back on my teammates, and it's not that I don't trust them on the battlefield. It's the way the hair stands up on the back of my neck and my arms start itching and my lungs seize up 'til there's no one behind me.

And here's the last person on earth I should ever have been comfortable turning my back on, and I know the feeling is-- or would have been-- mutual, completely, but here he is, naked and unarmed and with me close enough to see every drop of sweat that starts on his shoulder blades and rolls to the dip in his spine.

So I say it.

"Moi aussi, je t'aime," He pants, turning to look back at me, pressing back into me.

I slick up as fast as I can, then. I try going slow, I try being gentle. I just have the idea I ought to be. But then I guess it's my first time, not his, and anyway, careful is something you forget to be fast times like this. It's not the same as his mouth, or a hand, and it's tight. Granted you could grip harder if you wanted to, I guess you could.

I come too fast. Or I don't know, maybe he doesn't mind, but I'd have liked to go longer. The collapse down onto the mattress is a controlled one, and he rolls over under me, and he's that special kind of primed-and-ready rock hard he gets whenever he's gone to town on me before having his turn, and my plan is to suck him off except I barely have to touch him before he's coming into my hand.

Which I guess makes me feel better about myself.

We share a cigarette-- one of his, hadn't brought my own. The bed's a wreck, I'm a wreck, he's a wreck, and there's something nice in that.

"I meant it." I say, just in case he thought it was all pillow talk. Looking over at him now it suddenly seems important he know. "About... you know, you."

He smiles lazily, takes a drag and places the filter tip between my lips, so that his fingertips linger there. "As did I. About you."

"Yeah. Well. I just..."

"Thank you. It's nice to know."

"Yeah. I... I should go tomorrow. Not 'cause I want to, really, but if I don't... last weekend was-- well, good, but an aberration. If some idiot hadn't blown up our kitchen and distracted everybody on the base, then one of them might have noticed me slinking back cleaner than I left 'stead of dirtier. But I figure... I figure if I spend the first part of the weekend with you, and the second half out in the desert, then maybe no one will ever know."

"D'ac." He takes the cigarette back, kisses me once, quick and soft. "We should be smart, of course we need to be smart. Well, there are worse hardships than missing you on Sunday."

"Yeah." Somehow I worked my arm under him without even thinking about it, somehow I had him pulled in close without meaning to. If I keep not thinking much longer, who knows what I'll wind up doing.

Of course, I could still do it, even if I do pay attention to myself.

Probably more fun that way.


	13. Chapter 13

Sunday was pleasant, if lonelier than my weekends ever used to be... Funny how I never did used to feel lonely, no matter how alone I was or for how long, and now...

I mean, I try not to be... I don't know, try not to be a big girl about things, I guess. It's not as though I can't go on without him, I go and do my job and all, it's just the first time I've ever noticed the lack of someone.

But I work through it, and I'll see him Friday night and Saturday next.

I get in late Sunday night. Our Spy's already back, I pass him in the corridor, catch him smirking around his cigarette. Demo'll get in Monday morning, like. That's usually the case. The others come and go on weekends from time to time, even if they don't have much of a regular schedule, but I see the lot of them hanging about picking over the last of a late supper. Soldier's telling Pyro one of his war stories, largely invented. Truckie's trying to teach the Scout something, I can tell from the way he's drawing on a napkin and gesturing, all exasperation. And from the way the kid's looking off into the distance.

Doc and the Heavy have their heads bent over a chessboard, laughing. Can't tell who's winning, or if they're even trying to win. A couple pawns on either side have been knocked off and a couple beers have been emptied.

I take a seat next to Truckie and the kid.

"Dude, you really do smell like a hobo, man."

"Well, sorry, princess. Next time I come back from camping, I'll be sure to avoid harming your delicate sensibilities." I steal the beer he's about to open. "Sure you're old enough, Sporto?"

"Asshole, you know I am!" He lunges across the table to snatch it back, and I let him.

"Get some sleep after that one. And if you jam up your gun like that one more time out there, son... Ah, he's not listening."

"Course he isn't." I snort. "And you'll just bail his little arse out next time."

"Wish he'd take better care of it just the same." Truckie shrugs, but he's grinning. "Reminds me of my cousin's boy. Impatient little cusses both of 'em, but I don't know, I guess someone oughta look after him."

He passes me another beer, from a cooler he's got under the table. "Well, you might as well have one before you turn in."

"Sure."

We don't say much. His napkin diagrams are all for shotgun maintenance, a topic I haven't got much need for, and besides... the really nice thing about him is you don't need to talk much, and neither does he. Smart enough to lecture you about anything, but also smart enough to keep his trap shut on a Sunday night when sometimes you just want to sit.

Across the mess, Soldier's slapping Pyro on the back and telling him to rest up for tomorrow's battle, and back in the other corner, the Doc's taking notes down while the Heavy packs up the chessboard-- writing down where the pieces were?

Beer finished, I hit the showers. Day's winding up, and I've proven myself to be suitably filthy, might as well get clean before I head to bed myself. It's empty-- always is, and no matter when I crawl in, I never see hide nor hair of our Spy or our Pyro... I've given up on being curious, except over the sixth sense they must have to avoid the rest of us.

I do see our Spy as I come out.

"All yours."

"Not why I'm here. We have business, bushman. It cannot wait for after the working day is over."

I yawn. "Ain't gonna be much of a working day if I don't hit the hay."

"A minute of your time."

"Yeah, yeah." I follow him. What do I care about tomorrow, in the grand scheme of things? I mean, it never really changes...

He leads me down to the intel room and motions me to sit. There's something grim to the smirk now, and I stand.

"Very well. I brought you down here to ask you about your loyalty to our mutual employer."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" I crowd him. "I'm a professional, mate."

"What type of professional would that be, hien?" He threw a manila folder down on the desk where the intelligence sits during the days. "I am a professional as well, Monsieur. A very good one. I was... I was humiliated, once. Completely humiliated, as a man and as a spy, in front of the enemy."

"Touching story."

"I have been waiting for an opportunity, for revenge. Revenge. It is only fair. Open it."

I flipped it open, and unsure gave way to sick in less than half a second.

"For a long time, there was no one. I gave up so much of my time only to get nothing. I expected a woman. Perhaps more than one, perhaps always the same, or perhaps... perhaps a hired one. It crossed my mind that I might instead find a man, but I never suspected one of my own team."

The pictures weren't much, we'd at least been too careful for that, but they were there. The two of us passing the same hotel window, damning enough even if you could never see the bed from... from where? The rooftop across the way?

"Of course, as to what the two of you were doing together, I have only guesses. But the fact that you were there, that is enough to hang you."

"My weekends are my own." I snatched up the photographs, stuffed them in my pockets. "I still do my job!"

"Do you? And him... you would kill him, too?"

"Why wouldn't I? Anyway, he doesn't come after me, he's been all about taking down our Medic, remember?"

"You know the rules about friendship. Presuming that friendship is all it is. You know what will happen."

My stomach churns, but I don't let anything show. There was nothing RED could offer to make me turn on him like that... I like to think there's nothing they could threaten me with, but this war may be the kind of thing you don't just get let go from.

"Suppose... suppose they don't find out?"

"Well." He lights a fresh cigarette. "Then I suppose you have nothing to fear."

"What'll it take?"

"For now? Nothing. Just know that I hold this over your head. Let your little friend know that I hold this over his head. You didn't think I gave you the only copies? You tell him that I know this, and that he should think twice before he thinks of trying to embarrass me again."

"Bit of an overreaction, don't you think?"

"I have not even begun to get my own back." He snarls. "Consider yourself lucky. I didn't photograph him fucking you."

And he never will, he never will. The angles are bad, and he hasn't yet and he won't. We'll be careful. I'll pass the warning along, and we'll be careful...

And I'll figure out a way to get this damn sword of Damocles off us.


	14. Chapter 14

The whole week goes by without us talking. We'd agreed, on Saturday, but now I wish we hadn't. I can't hardly wait for Friday night to give him the latest development, I hate holding onto bad news. Trouble shared is trouble halved, or something like it. I don't know, maybe that doesn't really apply in this case. Maybe this kind of trouble can't be halved.

Still, every second of sitting on this is an awful twisting in my gut. It may not be explicit, but it's still photographic evidence. Dammit, that's bad enough. After the hell Demo went through, that's bad enough.

And who'd win, if the same thing happened to us?

No. I wouldn't. I couldn't. And he... he tells me he's been useless since the fridge, when it comes to killing me. I believe him. It's a strange way to fall in love with someone, but maybe there's stranger in the world.

Well... maybe. Unlikely, but maybe.

When Friday comes, I'm off as soon as the last round of the day's ended. I get to the hotel before he does and have to wait in the hall.

"Cher! You... You're agitated. What is it?" He slid the key into the lock, smooth, got the door open, and I bolted past him, past the window fast as I could.

"Spy..." My hands were in my hair, my feet wouldn't stop moving me. I wound up pacing right over my hat where it fell.

"I was surprised to see you here so soon, but in this state I-- What is it? Tell me." He grabbed my arm, hard, stopping me. "Tell me."

"Our Spy. On the roof across the street, last week."

"You can't see the bed from there."

"No, but you can still see the window. He could still see you, and me, in a room together. He's got pictures." I dug out the now-crumpled copies I'd kept in my vest pocket. "Wish I could tell you these were them, but--"

"But he will have others. A cause du moi. I followed him... to see if I could, I suppose. To prove I was better. If he never knew that I had done it, then... Stupid. It seemed important then. And the photographs!"

"They're not much, but they don't have to be--"

"No, no, my photographs. He sees the mother of our Scout. It is a long-standing arrangement, I think. It is not, strictly speaking, against the rules. Not the way that we are. By now, your employers know?"

"He said they wouldn't. Imagine he likes holding the threat over us more than he would using it. Power's gone once he does. But he could."

"If I bring him the photographs I took? We could trade."

"He'll keep the negatives."

"Then so will I."

"He'll know."

He sat on the bed. "So I will give him the negatives. But I will make one more copy. It may not be as bad as sleeping with the enemy, but sleeping with the enemy's mother cannot be looked upon with favour. Then we will have insurance. If he goes to someone, then so will you. Until then, he can think he has won."

"Maybe." I sit as well. "But it won't be good enough. Not if... Come after me again. It doesn't mean anything, but you've got to."

"I can't."

"It doesn't mean anything." I take him into my arms, hold onto him hard, press us together cheek to cheek. "We've got to. If I can't, then he'll know I... Then he won't trust me. He's got to trust me. I can't if you don't."

"I don't know..."

"It doesn't mean anything... he needs to think this thing between us is... I don't know, something less than it is. He won't if we never fight."

"But I don't need to kill you... It doesn't matter to him what I feel, only what you feel." He pulls back to look at me with the faint sad hope he had in the fridge. "On Monday, I will find you. We will pretend to fight. You can kill me. It will be proof."

"Fuck me, I can't think about that right now." I sigh, falling back.

He grins and looms over me. "I can do that."

"Huh?"

"Fuck you. If you like." His head dips down, his lips brush over my throat. "Mm, would you?"

I nod. "Yeah."

We strip off fast, and he rolls me over, and for a while I'm enjoying everything, but I can't relax when he gets his hand down between my legs, no matter how much he tries to get me to.

"You know, not every man enjoys it, even if he likes the attentions of other men." He pats my hip and sits up.

"If you can do it, I can do it."

He laughs. It starts out as a kind of a giggle and turns into this awful snorting mess. It'd be endearing, maybe, if it wasn't at my expense.

"What?" I snap.

"You are the only man I have ever met... who felt his masculinity was impugned... by NOT being fucked in the ass!"

"Well, fair's fair. You did it, I could do it."

"Maybe you can and maybe you can't, but tonight we're not going to." He rolls me onto my side and tucks himself up against my back, works his hand back between my thighs to lift one, fingers slick from the petroleum jelly, and there's something else, heavy and hot and slick. "This is good, too."

It is. It's enough to keep me hard, having him stroking past my balls, and his hips hitting against me, and his hot breath and teeth on my shoulder, and he moves my hand down to cup against the spot where the head of his cock hits. He holds my hand there with one of his, the other under me, fingers digging into my hip, trapped between my weight and the mattress.

"Harder," I hiss. I'm not sure if I mean the pseudo-fucking or the biting, but he does both.

He muffles the soft cry on my skin when he comes, licks over the dents his teeth leave. I've got a palmful of him, and he guides my hand up to my face.

"Lick it," He whispers. "Swallow. All of it, be good and I will do that for you... You want it, don't you? My mouth on you, I will be so good to you..."

I lick. It was never really in question, but if he wants to talk dirty to me, I'm hardly going to put a stop to it. I put on a show of sucking his come off my fingers and licking out the spaces between, cleaning off my palm and the drip down my wrist, and he hisses out appreciation, his chest against my back, sweat-slick and I can feel the rough of his hair, can feel one peaked nipple dig in as he writhes against me and swears under his breath.

The blowjob that follows is spectacular. I don't think it's just relative inexperience talking, either, I think it's somehow more electric, think he's somehow more needy. He pulls his mouth off me just long enough to gasp things that sound like begging, even if I can't understand the words, and it's messy and raw and over too soon.

I leave finger-shaped bruises on his shoulders, to match the ones he's left on my hip. His hand trembles when he reaches for his cigarettes, trembles when he lights two. I part my lips and let him place one between. The pads of his fingers stay long seconds there.

"Monday... you can kill me. Please, you said yourself we need to." He says, when the silence after has gone on long enough. "As you said, it means nothing, it is a necessity. He will trust you more, if you are the one to do it."

"I'll look for you, then." I feel sick about it still, but he's right, it means more that way. "You won't even know 'til it's over. Painless."

He smiles at me, that sad and oh-so-French one, and closes his hand over mine. "Too many variables that way, don't you think? It is a nice promise, but if I am uncloaked on the field, where you can see me, I may fall to another before you can line up your shot. I will come to you. We can pretend there was a struggle."

"It'll hurt." I shake my head.

"It always does, but never for long. If it happens the way you prefer, that is fine, but if it does not, then I will find you and you will... It will not mean anything. It will save us. Nothing you can do will hurt me more than knowing I was this careless, to allow us to be caught."

"We'll take turns. I'll go first, but we'll take turns. It-- It could go back to the way it was, it'll look like it did. And it won't matter... Most of the time it can be painless. We just won't avoid each other anymore out there."

"As you say." He scoots into the centre of the bed, lays his head on my shoulder. I trace the line around his eyes, where the tan stops and watch the smoke drift up from his cigarette.

Never wanted so bad for a Monday not to come.


	15. Chapter 15

I settle into my spot, not much variety 'til they move us again, and I scan the field for him. It'd be better if it was clean. Hell, it would be quicker and nicer than the death that started this whole mess. He was right, though, he doesn't show up out there, and it wouldn't be like him to be out in the open.

Yeah, yeah, our intelligence has been stolen... How long does that alarm really need to go on? Gives a body a splitting headache, and the last thing I need is a brassy voice ringing in my ears while I'm trying to line up what shots I can.

"I thought it would be extra convincing," He puffs into existence behind me. "This way."

"Blimey, give a bloke a heart attack!" I hiss, pushing him into the corner where we can't be seen. He's got our briefcase on his back.

"You should recover it."

"I should." I don't make a move to. How do you kill someone you care for? Even knowing he'll be back to breathing in less than half a minute, with the headshot removed as an option...

Aw, come on, you big baby, you've done it before.

Yeah. Before all this.

He kisses my jaw, gentle except for a scrape of teeth, and even that's soft. "The kukri. It's more intimate, don't you think?"

"I don't really think about this sort of thing." I pick it up, heft it like the weight's something strange, like I haven't used it hundreds of times, dozens of ways.

"After work is over, I will bring you the packet with his photographs. My photographs, I mean. Then you can make the trade. For now... for now, hurry, before someone sees!"

I hold him close, first, with one arm. Kiss him, as a distraction, reckon. I taste the copper in his mouth, when I've slid the blade up into him and his body sags against mine. I lay him down slow, close his eyes and kiss his lips one more time. The smell of blood is thick in the air, and as long as I have a wall at my back, I watch him instead of the battle down below. I'll watch him 'til he disappears, if no one disturbs me before then.

Not a luxury I'm likely to have, of course. I'm not at all surprised when it's our Spy who interrupts my weird little vigil.

"Your handiwork, I see. Good." He kicks at my Spy's leg, and it's all I can do not to lunge at him with the kukri I still got in my hand.

The snarl I can't quite hold back, and he looks at me, measuring.

"He came through here." I cover lamely. "Told you only reason I haven't killed him is he's been chasing down the doc. Keeping an eye on our intel."

"Hm. I should go after BLU's... the Scout was clearly not successful. Very well. I am pleased with this show of loyalty. It is good to know I was not a fool to place a little faith in you."

"Some kinda faith, dangling them pictures over my head. Not what you seem to think it was, anyway."

"Oh?" One eyebrow lifts, the eyes under dismissive, cold. Funny how I used to think you couldn't tell the difference between them, and now...

Now it all seems obvious and awful.

"Naw. Look, I didn't want the team to know..." There's a lull in the firefight going on around the bridge, a whole group taken out at once on both sides, and our Spy's not in a rush to go. Which gives me not a lot of time to think of a lie, but I cast through my memory banks for the only spy picture I've ever seen. "I have a gambling problem."

"... You have a gambling problem?"

"Yeah. Weekend before you took the photos, we ran into each other in the bar in town." That part at least was true. Hope I'm a good enough liar for the line of pure unadulterated crap I'm about to hand him. "He was wearing a grey suit, I thought he was you for a sec, by the time I knew different we were already getting drunk together. One thing led to another, and..."

"And what? You put your virtue on the line in some poker game?"

"I told you, it's not like that." The body between us shimmers and disappears, and I feel a small weight lift. "He didn't invite me back to his to fool around, it was a... high-stakes baccarat game."

"Merde!" He flings his cigarette down. "I knew I should have sprung for the Portable Baccarat Detector!"

That... worked? That worked! Damn, that worked?

"I want in." He nods.

"Sure. I mean, I'll ask him. And, you know... keep it under your hat around the team and all. Bit embarrassing for me."

I need to learn how to play baccarat...

Dammit.


	16. Chapter 16

He's there after work, as promised, I can see the line forming in the dirt, the toe of an invisible shoe tracing curving lines then scuffing them out. My whole body feels wound too tight and ready to snap as I hold the door and wait until he appears inside my camper.

When the explosion of blue smoke clears, he's sitting on the bed, and I lock the door as quick as I can with shaking hands before I land on him.

"I'm sorry." I place my hand over the space between his ribs, where I could still see the blood leaking out when I close my eyes. "I'm sorry..."

"Don't be. Never apologize for the necessary, cher... I don't remember the pain. You know how it sometimes is."

"Yeah. Yeah, reckon." I tore his coat off, his waistcoat, his shirt, pushed up at the thin cotton vest under that so that I could kneel by the bed, kiss my way across the imaginary scar. I've woken up enough times in respawn without a clear idea why I ought to be there, or without a memory of the pain, even if there must have been pain.

"Do you want the photographs? The envelope..." He reached for his coat, but I stopped him.

"Keep 'em. I... There's a bit of a snag in the plan."

"Plan is a generous word for what we had." He smirks. "What is this snag?"

"I told him we weren't having sex. I told him we were playing baccarat. He wants in."

"We can work with that. Perhaps if I wager my photographs, he will do the same."

"I don't know how to play baccarat. Everything I know about it comes out of that Peter Sellers movie from a year ago!"

"Vite, cards." He claps his hands. "You'd better learn fast. You're an interesting man to be mixed up with, it's a pity you're worth it... I have no choice but to teach."

I dig a pack of cards out of my footlocker, and he just looks at them with withering contempt.

"Five more decks and we might get somewhere. No, nevermind. This will have to do tonight, I can explain the rules and the values. Chemin de Fer, I think, not Banque. Chemin de Fer is the gentleman's baccarat. We can practice properly on Friday night, he believes this game is on Saturday, non?"

"Yeah."

He shuffles and deals, on the bed between us. His hands make the tattered dirty playing cards I've trekked through the desert with look elegant somehow, make the wool blanket good as any felt-topped table.

"Learn well, and I will... reward you." He purrs.

I don't learn well.

"I seem to have won the night." He sighs, tucking the cards away. "The prize is mine to claim, then."

"I don't remember making a wager." I grin at him.

He turns, leaning back and spreading his legs, one hand palming his crotch, lazy. "Had you won, I would have eagerly brought you pleasure. I feel it only fair that I receive the same, since you could not win."

"Well, if the big winner wants me on my knees..." I slide off the bed and crawl to him. "Maybe you better win me again Saturday."

"Saturday we will play with money. I would never allow you to risk playing another man with these stakes..."

"Jealous type?" I nuzzle against the bulge forming in his trousers, my hands sliding up his thighs. "Wanna keep me for yourself?"

"Yes," He hisses, grabs the back of my head and drags me up, folds himself down, so we meet in the middle in a hard kiss. "I found in you a great unspoiled wilderness, mon grand. And I don't want to share that with any man."

I can appreciate the metaphor... enjoyed a few unspoiled wildernesses of my own, non-metaphorically. Besides, I don't think I'd take well to sharing, either. Imagining someone else's hands roaming all over him makes my blood boil, and as bad as it might hurt for him to decide to go elsewhere, I'd be madder if it was a case of blackmail or something, if his hand was forced.

But I think my team's Spy is strictly interested in his lady, anyway. Or at least, in ladies in general. He's threatened me a bit over this, but it hasn't felt sexually predatory.

He pulls his cock out and pushes me back down, and I'm happy to go where he wants me, more than. I want to send him over that edge. We spent too much of our time on gambling lessons, anyway, I need to bring us off fast. We both need some sleep before tomorrow, after all, and he can't fall asleep here.

"Let me feel your teeth," He pants.

I do, nervous about it, but I do just a bit, and the strangled gasps and groans and the fingers tightening in my hair tell me I did good. A few hard pulls and a lot of suction and we're both tumbling over.

He dresses, giving me a reproachful look when he can't find one of his shirt buttons, and I light his cigarette. We share a kiss, smoke wandering between us, and I open the door, step out into the night and let him pass, cloaked again.

Footprints occasionally appear in the dust, where it's thick enough, where the dirt's not hard-packed and cracked clay, but night breezes erase them fast enough. After a while, I can't breathe in the scent of his disappearing smoke anymore, can't see dust kick up around invisible feet.

I head back inside to sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

It's his turn, if he can go through with it. I wait half the day, for a quick stab in the back to send me through respawn, but instead when he comes, he freezes, and I can feel him at my back, hesitating.

"Come on, you're a professional." I remind him in a whisper. "And I'll be just fine."

"It's not so easy now." His body drapes across my back, his mouth on the back of my neck and his fingers sliding up the side, over my jaw, 'til his fingertips are on my lips, leather and blood and the taste of his filter tips. "I meant to do it quick. Hell is paved with intentions like these."

I suck at his fingers, don't know who's blood I tasted on his gloves and don't care, can only think of kissing his lips as he died the day before. Too dangerous, anyone could come out at the top battlements after a respawn, anyone finding the right angle by accident might catch a glimpse of me, even when I try to duck back out of sight. Not so likely but not impossible.

"Do me in now and sneak out to the van if you can tonight." I take his hand in mine, grip hard and fast. His other hand has the knife, his other hand is free. "Beat me at a few more card games and I'll pay you out the same. That okay?"

I don't hear the answer or feel the knife, but I wake up downstairs a few seconds later. When I get back to my spot, he's there as well, huddled and burning, and our Pyro flashes me a thumbs up before scampering off.

I hold my gorge 'til he's gone, then I lose it, breakfast and a pot of coffee and endless bile splashing my boots and turning my guts inside out, burning in my throat. Even my eyes sting, my sides and back ache from it.

It's a disastrous turn, the Doc spots me heaving from down below and leaves his Heavy to fix me. By the time he gets to me, my reason for chundering's gone, disappeared, picked up by the same strange system that brought me back. And once he's off Heavy, my opposite number's put a neat hole through the poor bloke's skull.

Doc tries to follow Solly out into the fray, only to lose him, to fall to a Scout while our Soldier and theirs cram each other full of shotgun blasts, rocket launchers exhausted. Demo runs to help and stops short, and for a minute nobody does anything. Solly falls, and Demo just stands there gaping at the BLU who done it.

His ex-friend.

New sentry takes the BLU soldier out, but the BLU Sniper's got Demo down before I can pinpoint him, and they're rushing our base, I've already lost my last chance at their Heavy and Medic, their Scout's weaving fast, our intelligence is gone and everybody's coming groggy back to life, useless.

We lose the day.

It doesn't matter.

Out at the van, I remember the last time, the tricky slide up into tough muscle and gore, and his lifeless eyes, and I let him strip me to the waist and make love to the middle of my back with searching fingers and long, wet kisses, with apologies that half sounded teary.

"No apologies." I remind him. "Remember. Your rule, not mine. We do what has to be done, it doesn't change us."

"I brought cards." He produces six decks, from pockets I can't imagine hiding in the slim cut of his suit. He pulls a card out without looking at it. "What is this worth?"

"It's a three." I stare at him. "It's worth three."

"Bien sur." He flips it onto the bed, pulls another at random. "This one?"

"Nothing. Face cards are worth nothing."

"He remembers, he remembers." He smiles, lays one of those long wet kisses on my mouth. "Tres bien. If I can make it out every night undetected to help you practice, you might not embarrass yourself too badly come Saturday night. You will lose, of course, but perhaps you will lose with some dignity."

"Yeah." I gesture around the camper. "'Cause I'm all about dignity."

"Maybe you can throw piss at him if the game starts going badly." He jokes.

I don't do so much better, still haven't wrapped my head around the strategy of it, but I know all the values and I know the basic rules, and at least it's practice. And after, there's him... and there's us... and that's good enough for me any time.


	18. Chapter 18

Wednesday we don't see each other on the battlefield, but after the working day is done, he's taken the risk again to meet me at the camper.

I win a couple hands, even if I lose more. After practicing, he packs all the cards away with quick movements that aim for precise but quiver at the edges in need. And once the bed's clear, the same clever hands, the same trembling try at precision as he undresses. It's all so painfully slow, and I'm naked long before he is, but I started stripping off back when he was putting his cards back.

I try not to tell him he's beautiful and fail, when he rests a hand on my shoulder and the angle of his arm's just so, every line of him's a study in elegance and I can't hold my tongue, but he smiles, just smiles.

There's a slow collapse to the bed, eclipsed by his mouth crashing against mine, his fingers twining with mine, and his legs.

"Turn around," He whispers, his lower lip between my teeth.

I stare dumbly, feel dumb as my mouth finally is, and he has to turn me, show me how he means. The angle's all wrong for a long moment, when he does get me turned, but he knows what we're doing, so I follow suit, and soon enough it's not so awkward to suck him off upside-down, with my knees against his shoulders and my elbows lying alongside his thighs.

I turn back around after, we kiss even with his come dribbling down my chin and the taste of me thick on his tongue. The shared cigarette, the stroke of his hand along my side, lazy and intimate, and the way he watches as though the hand is a stranger's, moving on its own, a curiosity he's removed from in the after.

When he sighs, smoke billows up blue to the ceiling of the camper.

"I've stopped floating." He says. "I suppose that means I should dress."

"Suppose so." I pick his mask up, reaching over him to get to it, and it doesn't have to take as long as I make it, stretching out the time my chest rests on his. He kisses me again before his hands cover mine, before the both of us pull it over his head.

I sleep well as ever that night.

Thursday he comes to me again in my alcove on the battlements, making enough noise that I turn before he gets close. I can see the hesitation in his eyes, and the bruising that creeps in past the edges of the mask, the awkward way he holds his arm to himself, way he stands on one leg so that I can tell when he walks the other will drag. All that in the instant after I turn and before he can speak.

"Your Scout is dead." He gasps. "Myself, I am close. The kill could be yours. Rather you than him."

"Bit sick, isn't it?" I help him move into the corner, where he's less likely to be seen, if someone else comes up here.

"You would get the credit, though, and he wouldn't."

"Guess so." And besides, I'd rather be killed by him than one of the others. Of course, a knife in the back, if it's done right, is fast, is over before you can feel it. Same way my second choice would be my own opposite number, you wake up in respawn before you have the chance to really bleed. "All right, both of us."

"Qu'est-ce c'est?" He blinks up at me. It sounds wet when he breathes, and his last fight was a real close one, that's clearer by the second.

"At the same time. It'll look like a good struggle if anyone finds us before the bodies go." I hold him close. "On three, yeah?"

"D'ac."

I count, slow and measured, feel his arm come up around me and the tip of his knife rest in the middle of my back, and I find the right spot, the right angle, with my kukri.

On three it's over. We both come back to the start of the next round and don't see each other 'til after dark. This time there's no cards, just hard, frantic fucking, his tongue thrusting into my mouth, his cock between my thighs and mine rubbing off against his stomach, hands everywhere, and when the kiss breaks and I bite down on his shoulder he moans out a low and dirty 'yes'...

He strokes my hair after, the two of us crammed together on my narrow mattress passing a single cigarette back and forth.

"If we're not careful, I'm going to start getting off on this."

"Sex? If you're not getting off on it now, I'm doing something wrong."

"Out there. You hold me close, kiss me even, push into me. Like a lover... That is stupid, of course you are, but I mean... I never remember the pain, but I remember other things... I remember the way you smell. It is not hard to come to you. If you promise me it is the same for you, then it will not be so hard to have to kill you. If it's the same."

"Yeah." I tug him in closer. "Yeah, it is. Over before it hurts anyway. Any time you want to come sneaking up behind me, you go right on ahead. You can whisper something naughty in my ear, send me off with a smile."

"We are sick." He wraps his arm around me. "I didn't want us to be like this... I wanted things to be gentle."

"They are. Sometimes. Hey, we try."

"We can only try." A shrug, a deep exhale and a plume of smoke. "On the weekends... the weekends one could almost forget about the war. And... and I do like things, even when they are rough. Very much."

I stroked a thumb over the hard bruise and deep tooth marks on his shoulder. "Never woulda guessed, mate."

He snorts. "Yes. I love your reckless abandon and your horrible teeth."

I don't think it's fair to call them horrible... I mean, I take care of myself. I've never had a cavity. Okay, okay, looking at the kind of bite I leave, I guess they're a bit... dunno, painful looking, sure. But there are deep scratches down from my shoulders too, and a little blood under his neat-trimmed nails. No, no I guess neither one of us minds a little rough now and then.


	19. Chapter 19

On Friday night, in the hotel, he puts me to work really learning to be the Banker while he Punts, and I am slightly more miserable at that than I was at just trying to play the game, but neither one of us has to clear out by morning, and there's a little table pulled up between the bed and the single chair.

Under that, his foot slides up my calf and distracts me. His loose, easy slouch is inviting, and his smile. Those eyes are like the hot blue center of a flame, too, unwavering on me except to flick down to his cards when necessary. His hand is languid in its move up to the cigarette dangling from his lip, his fingers dragging over his mouth to pull it away.

"If you don't cut it out, I'm going to jump you."

"Try and control yourself." He chuckles, then blows a smoke ring. "If you can resist me tonight, when I am determinedly working my wiles, then you can resist me tomorrow, when I must pretend that I would not rather be crawling into your lap."

I growl at him, but I stay where I'm at, and when he coughs at me and lifts his eyebrows, I deal out the cards.

At midnight he leaves his chair and comes to sit behind me on the bed. His arms come up around me, but he doesn't strip me, doesn't kiss me. Instead he deals hands and whispers strategies, and I try to pay attention to those instead of to what we might be doing instead.

At one in the AM, I leave the cards aside and push him down, taste him, keep him, claim him. I don't know what time Saturday I expect my team's Spy to show. I'll have enough time to pretend I arrived ahead of him, to pretend at innocence.

"What the hell am I supposed to call you?" I sigh, dropping my head down to his chest.

"Quoi?" His fingers play in my hair, brush gentle over old scratches and bruises.

"Tomorrow. I can't call the both of you 'Spy', that's confusing... Can't call you anything else, that's..." Dangerous, even if I knew what else to call him. Much as I never really find myself minding if he uses pet names with me or not, none ever sprang comfortable from my own lips, but even if they did I couldn't use them in public. Neither one of them has a name, far as anyone else in this war is concerned, neither do I.

I've just gotten used to not calling him anything, except in that secret language of grunts and touches that call him 'mine'. No names at all, no need when it was only the two of us.

"Blue." He offers. "It is what you might both likely call me. After all, I will be the only one present from my team. And you are the only sniper. That makes everything neat."

"Sure." I said, even though I didn't think I could with a straight face. It's what my old man called his dog. The dog, unlike the son, could do no wrong... If he outlived me, for good I mean, it wouldn't cut him half as deep as losing that dog, and he never even gave it a proper name. Well, that's George Mundy for you, anyway.

Didn't mean for thoughts of home to intrude on me here. The hotel was the one place we had that was set apart from the real world that we came from, and the unreal world where we spent the work week, and I try, whenever we're here, not to think about the war or my family, or anything past the sinewy body under mine and that clever tongue.

Contemplation's settled heavy over us both, though. I can tell from the tensing muscle on his jaw he's thinking too, and probably about tomorrow.

"If we can pull this off..." He says.

"Do everything I can." I promise, turning my face to him, licking my lips so they drag wet over his skin when I speak. "Wanna hold onto you. Doesn't matter what gets thrown at us."

"And what will we do, if the war ever ends? You will still hold onto me then?"

There's a queer clenching coldness in my stomach even trying to think of it. "Can't I?"

"Mais oui, absolutement. And I to you, and I to you. Would you follow me to France, if it ends, if I asked you?"

"You asking me?"

"A hypothetical." He waves a hand, airy.

"Dunno. How would it look, two of us living together?"

"Not so strange. Some might guess, but whether they like it or not is their own problem and not ours. But many would not assume, just from that. There are other reasons for two men to share living quarters. And we would not have to be in the city, where your arrangements are the business of so many neighbours. Why? What would it be like if I followed you to Australia? I would..."

"No!" I sit.

"Cher?"

"I mean, we couldn't."

"All right."

"It's illegal."

"That's incredibly stupid, but all right. Not that you would be making a criminal out of me, I'm sure I've broken better laws than that, but all right."

"And the neighbours don't just sniff and turn their noses up at you and cross the street to avoid you if they don't like it."

"Oh, violence." He rolls his eyes and pulls me back down to lie against him. "Not that I am afraid of these hypothetical neighbours, against two men of our skill, but I would be happier anyway to take you home to France, when the war ends."

"If it does."

"I've spoiled your night. I'm sorry, I wouldn't have asked, had I known..."

"Forget it."

"Sleep... Just sleep, mon grand. And if the war never ends, we will never have to worry about where to go, we will just meet each other in secret as we have. And I will always be so hungry to be near you... and I will whisper to you in the darkness where even moonlight does not reach, and I will hold you, and I will love you... So sleep."

Eventually, I do.


	20. Chapter 20

"The hotel manager had my showerhead fixed during the week, if you don't want to bother with the tub." He offers, his foot sliding up my calf again, only this time we're not facing each other across the card table, we're lying in bed together and my hands all over him.

"Uh huh." I say, don't know myself if it's a yes or a no. I'm too tall for the tub, yeah, but too tall for the shower as well.

Still, got to wash the sex off me. Got to run to the bank, withdraw a huge bundle. RED pays me better than any single job I've held before, they pay me to kill every weekday. The jump from assassin to mercenary felt strange to me at first, but normal's relative, isn't it? Now it seems right enough, and having an income and no steady drain on it means I've got enough to blow.

Then I got to pretend I'm only just arriving, when my own team's Spy does. Don't know when he means to show up. We never hashed it out, imagine he'll arrive whenever it was he saw me show up that weekend. When did I set out in the morning, how long had the drive taken?

But it's early now. I can drag myself out of bed and into the bath.

He follows me when I do, sticking close, his chest against my back, his hands sliding up my front as I reach for the taps.

"What are you planning, then?" I reach one arm back to grope at him.

"Mm, you could guess, cher. Perhaps it is for the best, that we are on opposite teams. You could tempt me into too much trouble if we fought on one side. I would be forever trying to molest you in the showers."

"I shower with six other blokes."

"Yes. I don't think it would go over well." He smirks, stepping into the tub with me. There's no wall, if we get carried away, if our knees buckle or weaken, just the curtain rod-- copper, like the tub-- a suspended oval around us, and the flimsy curtain. Nothing two men could catch their weight on.

His hands are good, if not good enough to send us both crashing down to knock our heads on the bathroom fixtures. Good enough to ease out the tension when he kneads at my shoulders, and I mirror the gesture, two of us facing each other. Languid kisses, fumbling wet massages, a shared flannel and soap that smells like milk and lavender and something clean. Arousal, but the easy sort, the sort that can wait.

I have to get out of the tub, to let him get to the showerhead to rinse off, and I keep an eye on him as I towel off. The water sluices down him, makes him even paler in the sparkling clear curtain. As he shuts the water off, I step back into the tub, grab his hips and suck at his shoulder, at the cold, clear, clean taste of the water dripping from his skin, and the scent of the soap just washed away.

He moans, and I let one hand leave his hip, slip forward to seek out his slick wet cock.

"Waiting for me, yeah?" I release his other hip, bring that hand up to tease one nipple. "You want me to bring you off?"

"Yes..." His head rolls back, to rest on my shoulder. "This is always what I want..."

"I ought to leave, you know... I got errands before our game."

"No, no, no... finish this first. You torturer, finish this first." He reaches up, fingers in my hair, twists his neck to try and line his mouth up to mine, there's no good angle to do it, but I bend to oblige him anyway.

I plant my feet firm as I can, even knowing it's dangerous territory to try and do it in. I grip him sure and let him sag against me and try to take his weight.

"So much for getting clean." I chuckle, twisting my hand just so and thumbing right there, the little touches he likes, the things that get him off faster.

"Mmm, I will have time to get clean again... while you run your errands..."

His arse is tight and firm and pressing back against me, makes it hard to focus on keeping us upright. Hard to focus on anything that isn't thrusting up against him, water dripping down his back cutting the friction down, easing the slide of skin on skin. I can feel the tensing and flexing of too many muscles, know too well how he feels and looks under too many gorgeous circumstances.

I bring him off fast, before I can let go of my own self-control. He steps out of the tub on shaky legs, kneels on the bathmat before beckoning to me.

He smiles coyly up at me and pretends he meant only to dry my feet again, when I step out and stand before him, but the pretense doesn't last long. He gives head with abandon, with hunger. No matter how many times, it always takes me by surprise. No matter how many times, he always will... I can't imagine growing inured to that kind of whirlwind passion.

Afterward, another quick pass with the damp flannel, a hasty straightening of hair as I dress, and his liberal swig of mouthwash. Afterward, he goes to a safe under the bed, that I hadn't even known about, and draws out one of several bundles of bills.

"Consider this my contribution. The playing out of this scheme is in my best interest as much as yours, and you will lose more money than I will-- especially since I intend to wager blackmail photographs on at least one hand. Strategy, cher, not charity, and you will still need to put up your own money, a lot of it. But... this should soften the blow."

"I don't..." I hesitate. He's got a point, calling it strategy and not charity. He's right, sure, but it still feels...

"I'll see if I can't recoup the loss from your teammate's pocketbook. Then we can consider it squared?"

"Strategy." I repeat, tucking it into the hidden pocket on the inside of my vest. Maybe if I repeat it enough, I'll even believe it. He does-- knows better than to offer charity, and besides, it's not in his nature. Even his softest side. There's room in him for some kindness, but not for charity.

Strategy, then. It'd be disastrous for my teammate to know it, but the two of us are playing from the same shared pocket. The money, the blackmail, the whole bloody plan, it's the two of us against him and trying desperate to make it look like every man's an island.

When I return from the bank, with my pockets heavier, our Spy's reached the hotel room before me. There's surprise in the measuring look he casts over me. He expected to find us there together, maybe suspected to find us half-dressed or at least suspiciously mussed.

"Found the place, I see." I tip my hat to him.

"Counted the windows, from where I saw you before." He admits. "I did not think I would beat you here."

I just shrug and rap on the door. Nothing creative, as secret knocks go, but there's a peephole, so it's not like it ever had to be.

"Gentlemen." My Spy opens the door with a flourish. He's had another two chairs sent up since I left earlier, and a bottle of wine, glasses. "Shall we?"

From here on out, what happens... well, it happens. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, then. Nothing to do but play.


	21. Chapter 21

"Cigarette?" He flips open the case, the one with all the masks, and the cigarettes he never smokes. "You're a Gauloises man?"

"I prefer the low tar. I have my own."

"Of course." My Spy smirks and digs his own smokes out of a suit pocket. "I prefer Sobranie myself. I suppose I keep buying the Gauloises also out of a sense of patriotism..."

I shrug and dig out my own pack as well. Brand loyalty has never been a driving factor for me. I buy Benson & Hedges when I'm in the money-- and they're easy enough to find overseas-- and when I'm not in the money I pick up whatever's cheap and available. Course, before I had a war to worry about, back when my hours were filled with more tedium than work, I'd roll my own. Hell, I'd smoke the awful strong French ones he buys and doesn't care for, except the fewer little intimacies between us right now the better.

He pours out three glasses of wine before he starts shuffling and dealing, but none of us much drink yet. I plan on staying sober as I can, I'm not nearly good enough at this game to play drunk. But I can pick up the glass now and then, swirl it around, sniff at it. Pretend to drink.

I lose a fair bit in the first few hands, before we change bankers. That's fine. I knew I'd be losing a fair bit, I'd allowed for that. And I never needed much money to live on, need even less now that the base takes care of most my needs during the weeks.

Still, watching my Spy drink puts my teammate at ease, and they keep pace with each other through the first glass. Through the second, in the afternoon.

He whistles, to himself mostly, as he deals out another hand, the banker again, and I'm surprised when our Spy sings along to the little tune, when they join in a chorus together like old friends.

"Elle est tellement jolie, elle est tellement tout ca, elle est toute ma vie, Madeleine, que j'attends la!"

"If you're drunk enough to start a sing-along, I might just be able to turn my luck around."

"Dream on, bushman." My Spy smirks at me, tops off my glass. "And drink up."

"You don't need to get him drunk to take advantage of him." My teammate snorted, and that moment of fear gripped me, squeezing on my lungs. Somehow we'd failed, somehow he knows. "He is hemorrhaging money."

Relief flooded into the tight emptiness in my chest. Gambling. Taking advantage of me at the table, where we're gambling. It's okay, it's okay, for now it's okay.

The role of banker passes to me again, and my Spy looks across the table at his opposite number, gaze calculating. "So. Tell me, when you are not working, have you any hobbies?"

"Hobbies? Ordinary things, I suppose. Why? Yourself?"

"Oh, you know." He affects a very casual lean, then draws the envelope out in place of a wad of cash. "I enjoy amateur photography."

"Fils de pute!"

"I'll tell our Scout you mentioned him."

"You bastard, you swine!" He leans across the table, face red-- or at least, as much of his face as showed-- and I grab his arm.

"Hey now. You wanna get us booted out of this hotel? Let's try not to kill anybody, c'mon."

"The photographs are all there-- barring the one you took away with you. I was surprised you did not recover the rest, but it would hardly have mattered. You'll find duplicates. I thought it would make the game more interesting, to wager these. How much would they be worth to you? A thousand?"

"Yes, fine, a thousand." He throws the bills down, hands shaking. "It does not matter, I am not going to lose. They are all there?"

"You may inspect them, if you wish," My Spy shrugs.

He does, hunched over them, throwing suspicious glances at me.

I raise my hands. "Hey, mate, I'm not interested in any pictures of your scrawny, hairy arse, no matter how pretty the sheila in 'em is."

"Bien sur." He tucks them all back into the envelope. "All there is?"

"All there is."

He swallows, licks his lips, struggles for calm. "The negatives?"

"No. Not this time." My own Spy smiles like a shark. "I enjoy being behind the camera, much more than I enjoy playing the model. If you want the chance to win the negatives, you must come back next week to wager your own work. After all, I would hate for those pictures to somehow work their way back to my employers. I understand how it would give some the... wrong idea, you understand?"

"I understand." His hands tightened, leather creaking in angry fists.

"Good. Then next week will be interesting as well."

I deal.

It's a foregone conclusion, even if my teammate doesn't know it. It doesn't matter how good the cards are, my Spy will throw the hand if he has to. It can look like a bit of poor luck, or a failed gambit, but at this point we want to get those pictures into their subject's hands. Dangle the negatives. And me, I'll just play my part as the disinterested dealer until my own photos hit the table next week.

When dusk falls, enough money's changed hands, as well as the envelope full of photographs, and the three of us rise.

I leave when RED's Spy does-- I have to, or face that knowing look, but when we part company outside the hotel, I find a strange weight in my pocket, an old watch and a torn scrap of blue stationery.

'You'll only have nine seconds, but sometimes nine seconds is a lifetime, n'est pas? Get back to me'

Weird, borrowing the cloaking device, but I switch it on from behind my van, and nine seconds gets me from there to the safety of the hotel without attracting any notice, my teammate still walking off in the opposite direction.

"How'd you get into my pocket?" I ask, when he opens the door to me.

"I am very good at getting into your pockets." He grins, drawing me inside and handing me my still-half-full glass.

"Here's your watch."

"Hang onto it. The new one is better, and you may need it next weekend. Next weekend, he will bring the photos... After that, we could be free."

"Don't talk about that now." I pull him close, kiss him. Don't know if it's some silly superstition that makes me feel like talking about it will jinx us, or maybe I just can't think that far ahead, I always did prefer living in the moment. Or maybe... maybe it's just better not to talk about anything now, when we're finally alone, with a half-glass of wine and a fresh-made hotel bed...

Yeah. Yeah, best not to talk at all...


	22. Chapter 22

"Want you," I murmur, mouth dragging along his face, his stubble rough under my lips. The scrutiny and the danger's over for now, but the nerves are still there and I've got to do something with 'em or go crazy. And I do, I do... I want...

"Mm, cher?" He pushes my shirt off my shoulders. "Want me to what?"

"That time... that time with the, uh... The time I-- With the Vaseline and, you... and I..."

"Fucked me?" He smiles.

"Yeah." I can feel myself blushing, and I hate myself for it just a little. "That. Did you... did you like that?"

"I am not in the habit of asking for things I do not like." He lies back, smirks up at me. "I enjoy it, but not often. Still, even if the need does not take me, I could find it enjoyable, as long as I have a sexy partner who is keen to..."

"No, I... I wanted to try it. I mean, try-- I mean..."

"This idea of 'fairness' you seem to have?" He rolls his eyes.

"Well, I was tense then. Things are a bit different now." I cross my arms over my chest.

"Don't get defensive." He rises, grabs my wineglass. "Drink. Then I will... relax you. Then we can see how you enjoy it."

I drink. Who am I to argue with the voice of experience, yeah? And it's good wine, for Teufort. He pours me another glass, the last of the bottle, and I drink that as well, even if it is a little difficult to drink while someone's working a hand down your trousers.

Not like I'd tell him to stop. Rather like getting drunk and felt up all at once. Starting to feel a little over-warm, but relaxing at least doesn't sound like a foreign country anymore. We kiss, we kiss a lot, with his hands getting real familiar and our clothes getting real gone.

"Trust me," He whispers, before sliding down my body. And I do, I do, so much it ought to scare the hell out of me, so much it's not even scary anymore, I trust him.

The frantic pace and desperation's gone, and he moans soft around my hard cock and strokes my thighs as he sucks in long, slow pulls, and there's a moment where I forget what I wanted in the first place 'cause he waits 'til I'm coming before his fingers even get close, and by then the whole world's fuzzy.

The intrusion, when it starts, is... It's still strange, but with everything else about me looser, I don't fight it so hard, and at least that first slick finger's not enough to hurt.

"Good, good..." He practically croons each whispered word, I can feel them passing over the skin on my belly, warm breath. "Beautiful. Look at you, spread out for me this way. You must believe I will be good to you... I will, cher, I will. When you are being mine, I will make everything good, yes? Touch you, the way no other man has touched you. They do not know what they are missing... how perfect your body is. I could live on you, I want to breathe only you... My whole world is you."

I nod, and when he rolls me onto my side, repositions my leg, I go along easy to all of it, let him shove pillows around 'til we can both get comfortable, and then...

It does hurt, just for a second, 'til I tell myself to keep breathing and I feel his arm around my waist and his lips up the back of my neck. After that... there are moments so good it's electrifying, and moments so awkward I don't know how the good ones are even possible, and moments that, even though they don't hurt, let me know I could easily be sore in the morning, if we kept up enough of a pace. And the strange fullness leaves me feeling dizzy and nauseous when the whole thing's over, but I don't regret it either.

I mean, start regretting one thing and then you've got to regret it all, and I don't. I don't regret giving something new with him a try, certainly don't regret getting a blowjob or getting a pleasant buzz. Don't regret the wet and slippery drip down my thigh that comes with his final groan of pleasure and I can't regret the kisses and the pillow talk.

"Cher?" He wipes his fingers on the edge of the bedsheet and reaches for his cigarettes. "Ca va?"

"Dunno." As weird as having him in me was, as much as I can't say as it's my kind of thing, the emptiness that follows is... unsettling, I guess, in its own way. There's a wistfulness that usually doesn't come 'til we have to part, or sooner to it, and we have a whole day yet.

"If you do not enjoy it, we will not do it again." He shrugs.

I mirror the gesture. "Guess I wouldn't do it often. Except..."

Except if he could just set off that electric feeling, just with the first finger, just during blowjobs sometimes, and without the fucking to come after... Just enough to hit that spot right as I come, that part was fantastic.

"Mm?" He strokes my chest.

"Nah, it's nothing." Nothing I could say without dying of mortification.

"If you like."

"It wasn't bad or nothing." I assure him. "I-- I l-- I wasn't-- You were-- Maybe it's just not for me."

"D'accord. As I said before, it is not for everyone. It is not for me all of the time. This way is not my favourite, either."

"What is your favourite?"

He strokes his chin and looks up at the ceiling. "I don't know. I used to think I had some idea, but perhaps I do not. I think I just like to make love. And it is best if you also enjoy yourself."

"Well, I like enjoying myself." I snort.

"I like enjoying you. I will write poems to your cock..." He yawns. "Tomorrow. Remind me tomorrow. Sonnets. Whole epics, with adventure and romance and... cocksucking. La Petite Morte D'Arthur. It will be a classic in the literary genre of how much I like your cock. But right now, I am going to fall asleep."

"I think that's a sound idea." I kiss him and tug the blankets up around us. I don't expect either of us to remember the idea come morning. I expect us to write all our poems by touch.


	23. Chapter 23

We avoid each other, the first couple days of the week-- took too many risks during the last-- but the wait feels calmer. Not just sneaking out nights, we don't seek each other out-- or at least, he doesn't come to me-- during battles. Monday's a hectic crapshoot anyway and Tuesday's a rout, even those meetings, a few words and a quick death, even that's too much to ask.

Tuesday's about as bad a day as RED's had in a while, even worse than the chain reaction of failure I set off the day I vomited in the middle of a battle. In the mess hall, dinner's a tense affair, with Solly shouting everyone down about how rotten we did, Pyro huddling in the corner like he's waiting to be dismissed so he can go eat in peace someplace else. Truckie puts up with it, and Scout's confrontational, and Heavy's usually pretty calm when we're sitting through another one of our Soldier's tirades, but today he's on the verge of shouting back, Doc's warning look and hand on his arm holding him in check maybe.

Our Spy's buggered off early on in the high-volume lecture, agitated, but he hasn't been quite right since the photos of him and his gal hit the table on Saturday, and Demo's gone off as well, drunker sooner than I've seen him in yonks before he did disappear. And when it becomes clear Solly isn't shutting up, I make myself scarce as well.

I find Demo up on the battlements, bottle in one hand, his eye bleary and half-focused on the BLU base across from us.

"Ye wan' a drink?" He slurred, offering the bottle in what might generously be called my direction. Judging by the sloshing sound, it's three quarters gone.

"I'm good." I sit down next to him, look out at the BLU base as well. If my thoughts about one of the men inside it are a little bit wistful, they're a little bit happy as well. "Hey, tomorrow can only get better, yeah?"

"Och. It can hardly get worse."

"Too right, mate. But, that's life."

"My fault we lost that last round..."

"Last I checked there were nine of us on this team. I missed an easy shot on that damn Medic, and wasted my time trying to line one up on their Scout, he bloody never sits still. Ours didn't do such a bang-up job today either. And Soldier may run his mouth about how useless the rest of us are, but he broke his own legs about five times out there and he kept getting in the way of me doing my job, plus he tripped over the Pyro and knocked three of his own teammates off the stairs, so..."

"Aye, well. You know I'd like to knock his teeth in some days."

"Well, we all would." I shrug. "Everybody wants to knock everybody's teeth in some days. That's just part of being a team."

"Nae, 's not why. He's too much like him, and not enough like. And maybe none of what happened wouldae if I'd just been friends with him, but we never were and then I met... Sorry, forget it. I'm drunk."

"You're always drunk."

"Aye. Nae. Some of the time. Maybe the rest of ye're always too sober. Didjever think of that?"

"Frequently."

He laughs at that, goes maudlin again. "I miss him."

"Talk to him, then. Make up. Get drunk together, throw a few punches at each other, throw a few punches at somebody else." It was the only formula I knew for repairing friendships, but it was the only one I'd ever needed.

Well, I'd never needed it. I'd never lost a friend I needed. But I'd seen the basics work for plenty of other blokes. Friends fight, then friends drink, then friends either do or do not black out, and once the hangover's worn off, no harm done. Granted, normally friends don't blow each other up over footwear, but it's like getting into a brawl over a girl you both like.

Sort of.

Maybe.

"'S no good. Even if we did, it'd only all happen again."

"So no one has to know." I say, suffering through a sharp stab of empathy, and the more alien desire to fix someone else's problem. "Look, you got caught because you kept going out and getting photographed or arrested together-- as friends."

"Well, it's hard not to get caught up in things."

"You blew a diner up, for Pete's sake!"

"Aye." His head drooped forward. "It was Jane's idea. They wouldn't seat us at the same table."

"If you work it out with him, just... try and let your better angels guide you, that's all I can say. Keep blowing each other to smithereens during the week. And then if you happen to run into each other on the weekend, and you happen to be in the same place, if nobody calls the police on the two of you, who's got to be the wiser?"

"I can't tell..." He says, rolling his tongue around in his mouth a moment and blinking slowly. "If that is a very good plan, or if I'm very... very... drunk."

"Well past drunk." I agree. "It's a good enough plan."

We don't turn our luck around completely on Wednesday, but we come out on top Thursday. And I'm able to take my Spy out with a headshot, while he's disguising himself as me. It's a surreal experience, shooting yourself in the head, then watching yourself turn into your lover, then watching the body disappear.

I shouldn't keep watching the body, after it's over. It's just a poor bit of planning in general. I especially shouldn't, when it's him and he's headless. It's stomach-turning, but I can't help myself.

Besides, the first time we met, I mean properly, he didn't have a body. There's something in that which feels significant, even if I know better.

Friday's hit and miss, but we do well. Well enough that I'm not escaping another angry Soldier lecture when I hit the road, and Demo's in high spirits again.

I get to the hotel well before dusk, but it's the wrong Spy I run into outside the room.


	24. Chapter 24

His expression's cool and somber, and not at all surprised to see me, and after a moment, he gives me a curious smirk that seems somehow more disingenuous than usual.

"Fancy seeing you here, mon ami." He touches the brim of an imaginary hat.

"No kidding." I take a step closer to the door, and to him. "So what brings you 'round here?"

"I came to speak to your little friend." A spark of humour twists the smirk, and my blood runs cold at that, because he never had a sense of humour that wasn't nasty and mean, so I put myself in front of the door.

"Get through me first," I don't bother going for a weapon, don't think they'd hurt him, not since they fixed friendly fire, but I'll punch or kick or wrestle or fucking bite him if that's what it takes.

He laughs. "Precious, but unnecessary, Sniper. I am bringing by the photographs, in exchange for the negatives of ma belle amoureuse."

I sag against the doorframe, the immediate threat replaced by a new creeping kind, the opening I made.

The door opens behind me, and it's the frame under my hands that keeps me from falling arse over teakettle onto my Spy.

"I thought I heard an argument...? Ah. Perhaps you gentlemen had best both come in,"

RED's Spy pushes past me with another cutting smirk, maybe slightly friendlier, and I follow them both in, to where one of the chairs from last weekend has been removed. Still, there are two, and my Spy motions us to take them and sits on the edge of the bed, back straight, hands on his thighs, perfect attention.

"Now. What is this about? Have we decided to move up the date of the game? Surely someone might have informed me, after all, we are neighbors..."

"I cannot speak for my associate, but I came for my negatives."

"My price?"

An envelope comes out. My Spy goes through, takes out the few photos and the negatives.

"Bien." He nods, businesslike, reaches under the bed and fiddles with the safe without looking at it, comes back up with his own packet. "You have kept no copies?"

"No. No... I-- do not want them. They seem... comparatively poor leverage. And you?"

"No, though I cannot speak for my team-- Some of the photographs left my possession. It is possible the boy destroyed them, though."

"Ah. Yes. The boy." He shifts a little, uncomfortable in his seat.

"Well. If you do not mind waiting, I was not expecting you until tomorrow. I have not put anything up, but I can easily obtain another bottle of wine, if you care to drink on our... little truce?"

RED's Spy shrugs. "I will wait. I'm sure that my compatriot and I have much to discuss, while you run your errand."

My stomach turns, but I just nod.

Once my own Spy's had time to get down the hall, I can't stand the stretch of silence anymore, or the way he watches me like a snake watches a rabbit.

"Forgive me for asking, but why the change of plans?"

"The direct exchange, you mean, instead of a wager? Perhaps because in a game, there is the chance that I might lose, and come away with neither negatives nor my own photographs. Or perhaps it is not about baccarat-- if anything can be said to be not about baccarat. Perhaps it is because you gave some sound advice to a heartbroken drunkard. Perhaps it is because there is a woman I would marry only I have murdered her baby boy too many times to think there is a happy ending for me after this war. Whether he is your friend or your lover, I don't care anymore. If I made him squirm for a time, then that is enough revenge for me... Besides, I can always slit his throat again on Monday."

"You're not serious."

"About slitting his throat? You have done it yourself, haven't you?" He lights a cigarette, calm-as-you-please.

"No, I-- You're just letting it go? Because... what, because you overheard me and the Demo talking?"

"Yes. You sounded too honest. That was when I was sure, that you were not just playing baccarat-- besides, you are terrible at it."

"Thanks, mate."

"Don't confuse this for... for softness." He sneers out the word. "It is a single instance of kindness no doubt misplaced. I have absolutely no love for him, far from it, and I barely tolerate you, because you are good at your job, even if you are a filthy hobo. But... The quality of mercy is not strained. This once, you have a reprieve. Do not waste it, because if I had a reason to believe you were truly a security risk, I would destroy you, like that."

"Gotcha."

"I would enjoy it."

"No, no, I get it."

He sighs, droops forward. "But I love her... when the war is over, instead of sweeping her into my arms and taking her off to Paris, instead of marrying and honeymooning and showing her the life she should have... Her son will come home. And he will tell her what a bad, bad man I really am. And she will not love me. And they expect me to betray her-- oh, yes, our superiors know! If she actually knew anything about this war her son fights, I would be expected to steal that knowledge, or I would be terminated. So. Because I am a plaything of love's whims myself, I grant you a tiny freedom."

"Appreciate it." I say, awkwardness creeping across the skin of my forearms like ants marching.

"I could change my mind tomorrow." Another sigh. "But of course, by then I will not have the evidence. Pray I never obtain more, I suppose. And convey my apologies to our host. I will not be intruding on any more of your time."

He rises, gives a stiff, formal bow and slips out.

When my Spy returns, he looks around the room in a paranoid frenzy before I can tell him we're alone.

"He's gone." I put my hands on his shoulders.

He lowers the bottle of wine he's been brandishing like a weapon. "He's gone?"

"He doesn't plan on coming back. Although we should get new blinds put up in here, 'cause he didn't promise he wouldn't. But he doesn't plan to."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"It's not really forgiveness... just... As long as I'm a team player, he's got no reason to rat on me. That's all."

"I see." He says, though he says it like he's unsure. "Well. You'll have a glass of wine with me?"

"Any old time you like." I go to the bed, flop back and settle down. "No place else I got to be tonight."


	25. Epilogue

"Are these venomous?"

"Are what venom--AIEE! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE BRINGING INTO MY HOUSE?!"

"Our house." I correct him, holding the snake up. "And I'm asking you. I am not an expert on the wildlife of France."

"Why," He calms himself, with no small amount of effort. "The hell, would you bring that thing inside?"

"Well..." I heft the kukri in the hand not occupied with a snake. "I wouldn't want to kill him if he was harmless. But I wouldn't want to run into him later if he wasn't."

"That is an asp viper. They are venomous. Don't pick snakes up."

"I got his head, he can't bite me."

"And take it outside BEFORE you chop the head off!" He calls after me.

"Yeah, yeah."

I go out through the kitchen door into the back garden before dispatching of the snake that had been making its home under our gas meter.

Retirement suits me a little better than I'd feared. We kept going a few good years at that war, but as much good as respawn and the medigun do a man, they're only good for injuries. Might slow down aging some, I don't know, but they don't stop you getting older. They don't stop you getting nearsighted. That was a blow. Still, had all that money I never much needed back when I was in the thick of it, and the retirement package RED offers isn't a bad one.

Not everyone takes it... Solly wouldn't, he said they could just take him out of the respawn system when they thought he wasn't doing his job, and he'd go out the way a fighting man ought to. Fine for him, and whether or not they did, he was still alive when I left.

Scout's still fighting, far as I know. He joined up young, and maybe he's not as fast as he used to be now, but he'll be stronger than he used to be, more accurate. It's a fair trade in my estimation.

Demo's still on RED's payroll-- he's been replaced on the team, but he still makes explosives, and lets someone else run about setting 'em off.

I couldn't tell you if our Pyro's the same man or not. Hell, I couldn't really tell you if our Pyro was a man to begin with. Could be anyone in that suit. Could be I worked with several as it is. Truckie was still working when I left, but he'd said he didn't think he would be for long.

Doc and the Heavy both retired when I did. At least, retired from field work. Think Heavy still does some work, custom weapons and whatnot. Like Demo, hands 'em off to some fresh face once they're built, but he knows his way around guns, no reason they shouldn't keep him on.

RED's Spy got out of the game-- or at least out of the war. I don't know what happened with him, but I know his intent had been to make his peace with BLU's Scout enough so's he could ask for the boy's mum's hand in marriage.

I don't keep up with the ins and outs of the rest of the BLU team, but it's more from lack of interest than lack of opportunity, since my own Spy's still kept on in an advisory position. No more running around stabbing blokes, but times he jets off for meetings and comes home a few days later with a smug and tired look, sleeps off the lag in our bed and eats whatever I bring him and then drags me down for a tumble once he's awake enough.

Retirement's worth getting used to, anyway, as long as most of the time I've got him. I like the countryside-- guess I've had enough desert to last me a lifetime, I can enjoy the grassy hills and the wildflowers and the gentle rains that sweep past us in springtime. Don't much like going nearsighted, but I guess I can live with it, if only because every time I need my glasses to read the paper, he comes up behind me to lean over my shoulder and tell me I look distinguished.

I don't think it's true, mind, but it's still nice.

Anyway, might miss sniping, but taking care of a house offers something. The odd chance of killing a poisonous snake, that's something to brighten the days, that makes a place feel like home.

"Don't nail it up on the barn." He tells me, as I come back in through the kitchen.

"I didn't, I tossed it off in the long grass. Something'll eat it."

"Do you know what tomorrow is?"

I groan. "You've got to fly back to New Mexico for another damn intelligence meeting?"

"No-- and good news, they've put in an intercontinental teleporter at the airport. Of course BLU has a large-scale teleport system, so it will be easy. No more flying. But, I have nowhere to be. We'll have been together eight years, that's all."

"Oh. Happy anniversary, then. What am I supposed to buy you after eight years?"

"Damned if I know. I just thought I'd ask if you wanted to go out or stay in. We can go into the city. A nice restaurant, a much better hotel than the one in Teufort where we used to spend our weekends. Also, you are to call your mother."

My heart about stops. "When'd you talk to my mum?"

"When she called. Don't look at me like that, cher, I don't know who it is until I pick up the phone. Am I supposed to be afraid to answer my own telephone, in my own house?"

"Our house. I paid for half of it."

"Regardless, I live here. I paid the other half. I answer the telephone. She thinks I am your housekeeper. I said you were communing with nature."

I laugh and tug him into my arms. "Communing with nature?"

"She said that sounded like you."

"So... if you're my housekeeper, does that mean I get to see you in one of them frilly aprons?"

"You're a sick man." He sighs. "Tomorrow, we're going into the city. You will wear a tie and a jacket and take me to a very fancy restaurant, and then, after, in the expensive hotel room I shall arrange for us, I will wear nothing but a frilly apron if that is what you want."

I kiss his cheek. "Only if you've already got one. What time's it?"

"It isn't noon yet."

I squint at the clock on the wall past him. Looks like half an hour to, not that I'm certain at this distance. Still, if it's half an hour left 'til twelve, it won't be quite seven at night, still early enough to phone mum.

Maybe she knows what the eighth year anniversary gift's supposed to be...


End file.
